1 00:00:14,300 --> 00:00:18,780 0430 hours - the summer sun rises over the English Channel... 2 00:00:20,060 --> 00:00:25,180 ..revealing a fleet of Allied ships heading for the French coast. 3 00:00:25,180 --> 00:00:28,140 The Allies have been quietly building up their strength 4 00:00:28,140 --> 00:00:29,300 for a while. 5 00:00:29,300 --> 00:00:32,020 And it's time to show what they can do. 6 00:00:33,260 --> 00:00:36,380 The Allies will land a large fighting force on a handful 7 00:00:36,380 --> 00:00:37,660 of French beaches. 8 00:00:38,900 --> 00:00:43,340 The first wave of 6,000 troops manages to land on the beach. 9 00:00:43,340 --> 00:00:46,460 Up above, you've got the Royal Air Force, who are managing to keep 10 00:00:46,460 --> 00:00:48,500 the Luftwaffe at bay. 11 00:00:48,500 --> 00:00:51,620 But what is meant to be a display of Allied strength 12 00:00:51,620 --> 00:00:54,380 becomes nothing more than a bloodstained slaughter 13 00:00:54,380 --> 00:00:55,940 on the beaches. 14 00:00:58,300 --> 00:00:59,580 It's a disaster. 15 00:01:00,940 --> 00:01:06,380 Almost 3,500 thousand Canadian and 275 British soldiers 16 00:01:06,380 --> 00:01:09,020 fall or are captured. 17 00:01:09,020 --> 00:01:12,940 Losses total almost 60%. 18 00:01:12,940 --> 00:01:15,700 It ends up demonstrating that a cross-Channel attack 19 00:01:15,700 --> 00:01:19,540 is a very, very dangerous thing, a bit like picking up a snake - 20 00:01:19,540 --> 00:01:24,660 you might pick it up and you're bigger and you're stronger, but it might turn around and bite you. 21 00:01:24,660 --> 00:01:27,860 Because this isn't June 1944 - 22 00:01:27,860 --> 00:01:30,620 it's August 1942. 23 00:01:30,620 --> 00:01:33,700 And this is the Allied raid on the fortified French fishing village 24 00:01:33,700 --> 00:01:35,700 of Dieppe. 25 00:01:35,700 --> 00:01:37,380 It wasn't an invasion, it was a raid. 26 00:01:37,380 --> 00:01:39,820 It was a test to see how hard it would be 27 00:01:39,820 --> 00:01:42,620 to bring troops across the Channel. 28 00:01:42,620 --> 00:01:46,900 And what was very clear was it was going to be very hard indeed. 29 00:01:46,900 --> 00:01:51,140 The absolute disaster of the Dieppe raid convinces Winston Churchill 30 00:01:51,140 --> 00:01:56,060 that landing in France would be absolutely suicidal. 31 00:01:56,060 --> 00:01:59,900 But casualties are mounting in the East, and Stalin's calls 32 00:01:59,900 --> 00:02:03,300 for a second front become more and more urgent. 33 00:02:03,300 --> 00:02:05,660 The Allies must return to Europe... 34 00:02:06,740 --> 00:02:08,180 ..whatever the cost. 35 00:02:19,620 --> 00:02:22,380 Autumn 1943. 36 00:02:22,380 --> 00:02:25,940 At the conference of Allied leaders in Tehran, 37 00:02:25,940 --> 00:02:29,340 Russia's Joseph Stalin complains that, while his forces 38 00:02:29,340 --> 00:02:32,820 have the Nazis on the run in the East, 39 00:02:32,820 --> 00:02:36,980 Britain and America are dragging their feet in the West. 40 00:02:39,300 --> 00:02:42,580 His argument, really, is that the war will won quicker 41 00:02:42,580 --> 00:02:46,380 if the war was fought on two fronts, that they shared the burden 42 00:02:46,380 --> 00:02:49,980 in terms of manpower, in terms of blood expenditure. 43 00:02:51,500 --> 00:02:55,260 Because just four months earlier, Stalin had felt the full force 44 00:02:55,260 --> 00:02:58,940 of Hitler's obsession with the great Bolshevik bear. 45 00:03:01,380 --> 00:03:07,860 1943's utter humiliation at Stalingrad and the 800,000 46 00:03:07,860 --> 00:03:12,940 that had been lost does not dampen Hitler's pathological enthusiasm 47 00:03:12,940 --> 00:03:16,220 for actually wanting to totally destroy the Soviet Union 48 00:03:16,220 --> 00:03:17,740 and to defeat Stalin. 49 00:03:22,380 --> 00:03:25,460 Hitler's opportunity presented itself for the little-known 50 00:03:25,460 --> 00:03:28,420 southern Russian town of Kursk. 51 00:03:28,420 --> 00:03:32,820 The beginning of 1943 was such a success for the Soviets 52 00:03:32,820 --> 00:03:37,820 that they moved so far in advance that they created a kind of bulge 53 00:03:37,820 --> 00:03:42,620 of troops around Kursk, a salient that was actually 54 00:03:42,620 --> 00:03:45,340 sufficiently exposed. It could be exploited by the Germans. 55 00:03:45,340 --> 00:03:47,500 The Germans could simply cut it off. 56 00:03:49,140 --> 00:03:53,700 German Field Marshal Erich von Manstein smells Soviet blood 57 00:03:53,700 --> 00:03:56,500 in the 120-mile Russian bulge 58 00:03:56,500 --> 00:03:59,140 protruding into German-held territory. 59 00:04:01,140 --> 00:04:03,940 Von Manstein tells Hitler what he wants to do 60 00:04:03,940 --> 00:04:09,140 is to encircle the Soviets at Kursk, in this salient, and cut them off. 61 00:04:09,140 --> 00:04:15,020 Now, if he can do that, he will isolate 600,000 Soviet troops. 62 00:04:16,460 --> 00:04:20,180 Hitler wants to carry out Manstein's idea, but - unusually for Hitler - 63 00:04:20,180 --> 00:04:23,100 he doesn't want to do it immediately. 64 00:04:23,100 --> 00:04:27,540 And the reason for that is the Soviet T-34 tank. 65 00:04:31,780 --> 00:04:35,420 If the Spitfires saved Britain, then the T-34 saved Russia. 66 00:04:35,420 --> 00:04:39,260 It has a V12 engine, creating 500 horsepower, 67 00:04:39,260 --> 00:04:42,260 but the most important thing is it runs on diesel - 68 00:04:42,260 --> 00:04:46,140 and diesel freezes at a far lower temperature than petrol, 69 00:04:46,140 --> 00:04:48,300 which is what the Nazi forces were using. 70 00:04:48,300 --> 00:04:50,300 In fact, under the Panzers, 71 00:04:50,300 --> 00:04:54,900 they had to light fires to stop them from freezing up at night. 72 00:04:54,900 --> 00:04:57,900 What made the T-34 stand out from any other tank before it 73 00:04:57,900 --> 00:05:00,380 is this stuff - sloped armour. 74 00:05:00,380 --> 00:05:05,060 What you get is additional protection but no additional weight. 75 00:05:05,060 --> 00:05:08,020 The consequence was that in early tank battles, 76 00:05:08,020 --> 00:05:11,900 German tanks saw their shells literally bouncing off 77 00:05:11,900 --> 00:05:14,820 the hull of the Russian tanks. 78 00:05:14,820 --> 00:05:21,620 By the time of Kursk, the Soviets had over 4,500 T-34s in action - 79 00:05:21,620 --> 00:05:26,180 with thousands more rolling out of their factories. 80 00:05:26,180 --> 00:05:29,780 In response, the Germans reverse-engineer the T-34 81 00:05:29,780 --> 00:05:34,380 and produce a close but much larger replica called the Panther. 82 00:05:36,740 --> 00:05:41,540 It has a gun capable of breaching T-34 armour at close range. 83 00:05:41,540 --> 00:05:45,020 And despite having twice the armour of the T-34, 84 00:05:45,020 --> 00:05:48,060 it is faster across the ground. 85 00:05:48,060 --> 00:05:50,980 The Germans pay the greatest tribute of all to the T-34 - 86 00:05:50,980 --> 00:05:54,740 having treated the Soviets with such condescension 87 00:05:54,740 --> 00:05:57,460 because they were seen as racially inferior. 88 00:05:57,460 --> 00:06:00,060 They were now copying their ideas. 89 00:06:00,060 --> 00:06:02,260 So, you know, it was the ultimate irony. 90 00:06:03,940 --> 00:06:07,580 But the Panther is not the only T-34 killer 91 00:06:07,580 --> 00:06:10,420 Hitler will unleash at Kursk. 92 00:06:10,420 --> 00:06:12,060 The other was the Panzer VI, 93 00:06:12,060 --> 00:06:15,180 but that's more famously known as the Tiger tank. 94 00:06:16,940 --> 00:06:20,380 Now, that has this really mighty 88-millimetre gun 95 00:06:20,380 --> 00:06:24,540 that can take out a T-34 at the range of one mile. 96 00:06:25,980 --> 00:06:28,580 Hitler was waiting for his new tanks to arrive. 97 00:06:28,580 --> 00:06:31,780 These, Hitler believed, were weapons worth waiting for. 98 00:06:31,780 --> 00:06:34,020 These would turn the tide. 99 00:06:38,740 --> 00:06:45,380 After 1941's invasion of Kursk, the Germans executed 15,000 civilians 100 00:06:45,380 --> 00:06:49,380 and press-ganged 30,000 more into forced labour battalions. 101 00:06:50,780 --> 00:06:53,340 To avoid another Nazi scourge, 102 00:06:53,340 --> 00:06:56,820 terrified locals help General Georgy Zhukov's troops 103 00:06:56,820 --> 00:07:00,740 dig an incredible 3,000 miles of trenches, 104 00:07:00,740 --> 00:07:04,260 containing nearly 5,000 mines per mile - 105 00:07:04,260 --> 00:07:06,540 almost a million in total. 106 00:07:06,540 --> 00:07:09,700 This will blunt the German attack. 107 00:07:09,700 --> 00:07:13,220 Zubkov uses his idea of deep defence - 108 00:07:13,220 --> 00:07:16,780 so this sort of 50-mile zone of anti-tank trenches, 109 00:07:16,780 --> 00:07:20,220 anti-tank mines, anti-tank obstacles. 110 00:07:20,220 --> 00:07:22,220 It's extraordinary strength in depth. 111 00:07:22,220 --> 00:07:25,500 It's a bit like the Western Front in the First World War. 112 00:07:28,460 --> 00:07:31,180 On the 5th of July, 1943, 113 00:07:31,180 --> 00:07:34,340 Hitler launches Operation Citadel. 114 00:07:34,340 --> 00:07:37,580 There's a huge amount that rests on the Kursk battle. 115 00:07:37,580 --> 00:07:41,820 They know, one way or the other, it's going to be decisive. 116 00:07:41,820 --> 00:07:47,740 By the numbers, Russia has the upper hand - over 400,000 more men, 117 00:07:47,740 --> 00:07:52,100 almost twice as many heavy guns, 900 more aircraft 118 00:07:52,100 --> 00:07:54,460 and at least 700 more tanks. 119 00:08:02,780 --> 00:08:08,060 What happens over the next few days is a battle that is as decisive 120 00:08:08,060 --> 00:08:11,380 to world history as the Battle of Waterloo. 121 00:08:11,380 --> 00:08:13,260 This would be the last time 122 00:08:13,260 --> 00:08:15,980 the Germans would move forward in Russia. 123 00:08:17,260 --> 00:08:19,940 The German assault is an awesome demonstration 124 00:08:19,940 --> 00:08:22,380 of modern military power. 125 00:08:22,380 --> 00:08:25,700 But on the first day, even a battle group spearheaded 126 00:08:25,700 --> 00:08:29,340 by new Tiger tanks can only advance four miles. 127 00:08:30,940 --> 00:08:35,100 200 Tigers and 270 Panthers were at Kursk. 128 00:08:36,500 --> 00:08:40,780 But Hitler's much-anticipated heavy tanks performed badly. 129 00:08:42,340 --> 00:08:43,820 They were seriously defective. 130 00:08:43,820 --> 00:08:45,540 They were over-engineered. 131 00:08:45,540 --> 00:08:47,860 They were prone to electrical failure. 132 00:08:47,860 --> 00:08:50,580 They were breaking down constantly. 133 00:08:50,580 --> 00:08:52,700 So they were a total failure. 134 00:08:54,740 --> 00:08:59,020 By day five, Germany's northern assault peters out - 135 00:08:59,020 --> 00:09:03,300 and its southern spearhead is about to be severely tested. 136 00:09:04,940 --> 00:09:09,500 On July the 12th, on a field near the small town of Prokhorovka, 137 00:09:09,500 --> 00:09:13,460 Soviet tanks charge toward the German southern flank. 138 00:09:13,460 --> 00:09:18,620 What follows is one of the biggest tank battles in military history. 139 00:09:18,620 --> 00:09:23,140 600 Russian tanks face 250 German Panzers. 140 00:09:25,460 --> 00:09:30,180 What happens at Kursk is exactly what the Germans don't want. 141 00:09:30,180 --> 00:09:35,420 What they wanted was a tank battle fought over great distances. 142 00:09:35,420 --> 00:09:38,780 But that's not the game the Russians were playing. 143 00:09:38,780 --> 00:09:42,820 The T-34s charge as close as they can to the German tanks, 144 00:09:42,820 --> 00:09:45,500 nullifying the 88s' advantage. 145 00:09:46,700 --> 00:09:49,380 It's a close-quarter, attritional battle. 146 00:09:49,380 --> 00:09:51,180 It's almost like dodgems or bumper cars. 147 00:09:51,180 --> 00:09:54,060 They're smashing into each other. 148 00:09:54,060 --> 00:09:57,260 It became a case of who could turn the turret most quickly, 149 00:09:57,260 --> 00:10:01,220 who could get their gun onto the enemy more quickly 150 00:10:01,220 --> 00:10:03,580 at very short range? 151 00:10:03,580 --> 00:10:08,580 It's a real scrap, and it's turning into this utter carnage. 152 00:10:12,140 --> 00:10:16,340 The Battle of Kursk grinds on for nearly two months. 153 00:10:16,340 --> 00:10:18,220 The final tally is gruesome. 154 00:10:19,340 --> 00:10:25,900 Around 800,000 Red Army and 200,000 Germans are killed or wounded, 155 00:10:25,900 --> 00:10:31,140 1,600 Soviet and 252 German tanks destroyed. 156 00:10:32,420 --> 00:10:34,300 Now, at first glance, these numbers 157 00:10:34,300 --> 00:10:36,700 actually may look bad for the Soviets. 158 00:10:36,700 --> 00:10:38,860 But don't be fooled by the first glance 159 00:10:38,860 --> 00:10:42,100 because this was not an equal fight. 160 00:10:43,540 --> 00:10:48,860 The Russians could replace those men, they could replace those tanks. 161 00:10:48,860 --> 00:10:52,100 German losses were completely irreplaceable. 162 00:10:54,980 --> 00:10:59,700 No single battle can dent Russia's ability to out-manufacture Germany. 163 00:11:01,460 --> 00:11:07,140 The Soviets produce over 14,000 T-34s every year of the war. 164 00:11:07,140 --> 00:11:12,220 Germany, by contrast, manages fewer than 6,000 Panthers in total. 165 00:11:13,700 --> 00:11:16,140 Unable to replenish their forces, 166 00:11:16,140 --> 00:11:19,300 the Germans retreat from the Kursk bubble. 167 00:11:19,300 --> 00:11:23,260 Before Kursk, there were still some rational German officers - 168 00:11:23,260 --> 00:11:24,740 not just the Nazis - 169 00:11:24,740 --> 00:11:27,980 who thought it might be possible to turn the tide in the East. 170 00:11:27,980 --> 00:11:32,020 After Kursk, I don't think for a moment any sensible German officer 171 00:11:32,020 --> 00:11:34,020 thought the war in the East was winnable. 172 00:11:34,020 --> 00:11:37,060 What we're going to see is a retreat that's going to take place 173 00:11:37,060 --> 00:11:40,460 over two years, and it's going to end with one of those iconic 174 00:11:40,460 --> 00:11:47,380 T-34 tanks parked right outside the Reichstag in the heart of Berlin. 175 00:11:47,380 --> 00:11:51,620 Before the dust has even settled on Kursk, events unfolding 176 00:11:51,620 --> 00:11:55,460 in the Mediterranean will force Hitler to turn his attention - 177 00:11:55,460 --> 00:11:58,340 and his heavy tanks - south. 178 00:12:01,140 --> 00:12:03,780 Summer 1943. 179 00:12:03,780 --> 00:12:08,660 As the Soviets finally push the Germans back in the East, 180 00:12:08,660 --> 00:12:12,420 the Allies hope to put the Axis on the back foot in the South 181 00:12:12,420 --> 00:12:15,580 by invading Mussolini's Italy. 182 00:12:15,580 --> 00:12:18,620 Churchill sees it as the kind of soft underbelly, 183 00:12:18,620 --> 00:12:21,380 from which he can approach from below, carve it 184 00:12:21,380 --> 00:12:23,340 and attack Germany from there. 185 00:12:23,340 --> 00:12:27,580 In 1943, it seemed to be the only thing Allied forces could do. 186 00:12:27,580 --> 00:12:31,340 But before they can invade Italy, the Allies need to secure the vital 187 00:12:31,340 --> 00:12:36,180 stepping stone at the toe of the Italian peninsula - Sicily. 188 00:12:39,580 --> 00:12:43,940 They launch the invasion of Sicily on July 10th, 1943. 189 00:12:46,740 --> 00:12:50,420 Sicily falls in weeks - but in the midst of their first success 190 00:12:50,420 --> 00:12:54,020 in Europe, the Allies make a fundamental error. 191 00:12:55,220 --> 00:12:58,740 They leave the Straits of Messina open, allowing the rump 192 00:12:58,740 --> 00:13:03,580 of the Axis force to escape onto the mainland aboard civilian ferries. 193 00:13:06,180 --> 00:13:08,820 They had the German army right there in the palm of their hands, 194 00:13:08,820 --> 00:13:11,140 but they failed to finish them off. 195 00:13:11,140 --> 00:13:15,780 More than 50,000 troops, almost 10,000 vehicles 196 00:13:15,780 --> 00:13:18,860 and nearly 12,000 tonnes of supplies 197 00:13:18,860 --> 00:13:21,660 could have been seized by the Allies. 198 00:13:21,660 --> 00:13:24,900 Instead, they are available to defend the mainland. 199 00:13:26,980 --> 00:13:31,500 Despite this disappointment, the Allies have scored a victory, 200 00:13:31,500 --> 00:13:35,460 and the taking of Sicily has massive repercussions. 201 00:13:35,460 --> 00:13:37,660 Benito Mussolini is taken out of power. 202 00:13:37,660 --> 00:13:40,220 And the Italians capitulate - literally - 203 00:13:40,220 --> 00:13:44,100 a surrender of Italian forces as a belligerent force. 204 00:13:44,100 --> 00:13:48,300 That provides hope that maybe we won't have to fight 205 00:13:48,300 --> 00:13:50,980 for every last square inch of Italy. 206 00:13:50,980 --> 00:13:54,100 But Germany doesn't see it that way. 207 00:13:54,100 --> 00:13:59,420 They're quite pleased to be rid of their hapless ally 208 00:13:59,420 --> 00:14:02,860 and they can now take control of the situation. 209 00:14:02,860 --> 00:14:06,220 The Germans race in, the Germans take over in Italy. 210 00:14:08,460 --> 00:14:11,060 To replace Mussolini's turncoats, 211 00:14:11,060 --> 00:14:14,900 Hitler urgently dispatches eight and a half divisions - 212 00:14:14,900 --> 00:14:17,900 around 125,000 of his own troops - 213 00:14:17,900 --> 00:14:20,500 to defend Italy from Allied invasion. 214 00:14:23,060 --> 00:14:27,380 They are led by Field Marshal Albert 'Smiling' Kesselring. 215 00:14:30,220 --> 00:14:32,980 On September 9th, 1943, 216 00:14:32,980 --> 00:14:36,740 American forces land on the Italian mainland at Salerno, 217 00:14:36,740 --> 00:14:38,180 south of Naples. 218 00:14:40,620 --> 00:14:43,740 They find themselves up against some of the most hardened battle troops 219 00:14:43,740 --> 00:14:45,660 at Kesselring's disposal. 220 00:14:47,060 --> 00:14:49,900 That's the 16th Panzer Division. 221 00:14:49,900 --> 00:14:52,500 Now, these guys are veterans of Stalingrad. 222 00:14:52,500 --> 00:14:55,620 These are the people who got out of Stalingrad. 223 00:14:55,620 --> 00:14:59,260 These are people who had experienced the toughest fighting of the war. 224 00:14:59,260 --> 00:15:01,980 They are seriously hard. 225 00:15:01,980 --> 00:15:05,540 Many of their American foe are virgin soldiers. 226 00:15:05,540 --> 00:15:08,740 A lot of these troops are no more experienced in battle 227 00:15:08,740 --> 00:15:11,620 than you or I, so they simply panic. 228 00:15:12,860 --> 00:15:17,060 US generals plan to advance far enough to eliminate German artillery 229 00:15:17,060 --> 00:15:19,180 by the end of the first day. 230 00:15:20,500 --> 00:15:24,700 But 24 hours later, their force is still pinned down by the beaches. 231 00:15:26,420 --> 00:15:31,140 So Kesselring has time to pour more troops into the area. 232 00:15:31,140 --> 00:15:33,580 Now the counterattack very nearly throws the Americans 233 00:15:33,580 --> 00:15:34,860 back into the sea. 234 00:15:34,860 --> 00:15:37,620 It's only when Eisenhower becomes personally involved 235 00:15:37,620 --> 00:15:41,220 that thousands of paratroopers are landed close to the water's edge 236 00:15:41,220 --> 00:15:44,220 and the forces rally. 237 00:15:44,220 --> 00:15:48,420 The resulting carnage causes 15,000 Allied, 238 00:15:48,420 --> 00:15:52,220 but only 8,000 German casualties. 239 00:15:52,220 --> 00:15:54,940 What the Salerno landings really underlined is how difficult 240 00:15:54,940 --> 00:15:57,860 it is to make a successful seaborne invasion. 241 00:15:57,860 --> 00:16:00,340 This was gruelling, terrible work 242 00:16:00,340 --> 00:16:03,700 for the Allies trying to move forward. 243 00:16:03,700 --> 00:16:06,340 Italy will take more time for the Allies 244 00:16:06,340 --> 00:16:08,100 to conquer than expected. 245 00:16:11,540 --> 00:16:14,260 One reason for this is the Apennine Mountain range. 246 00:16:16,580 --> 00:16:20,540 840 miles long and 80 miles wide, 247 00:16:20,540 --> 00:16:24,540 it stretches along the length of central and northern Italy. 248 00:16:24,540 --> 00:16:28,020 The Italian countryside is very, very beautiful. 249 00:16:28,020 --> 00:16:32,540 But it's a land full of peaks and that makes it incredibly 250 00:16:32,540 --> 00:16:36,180 difficult to attack, relatively easy to defend. 251 00:16:36,180 --> 00:16:41,060 A combination of intense winter weather and this rather impressive 252 00:16:41,060 --> 00:16:44,020 terrain slows the advance down. 253 00:16:45,500 --> 00:16:49,060 Taking advantage of this terrain is the Gustav Line, 254 00:16:49,060 --> 00:16:52,860 a system of sophisticated interlocking German defences. 255 00:16:54,580 --> 00:16:58,860 Beyond the Gustav Line you had basically a direct road to Rome. 256 00:16:58,860 --> 00:17:01,700 So it was enormously heavily defended. 257 00:17:01,700 --> 00:17:05,580 The Germans were not going to allow the Allies through. 258 00:17:08,180 --> 00:17:12,060 In January 1944, the Allied armies are knocking at the door 259 00:17:12,060 --> 00:17:15,140 of the Gustav Line, which the Germans nickname 260 00:17:15,140 --> 00:17:19,060 a string of pearls anchored by Monte Cassino. 261 00:17:20,660 --> 00:17:23,740 Crowned by its ancient Benedictine monastery, 262 00:17:23,740 --> 00:17:26,860 Monte Cassino is an impenetrable hill 263 00:17:26,860 --> 00:17:31,820 standing 1703 feet above sea level, with a sheer 45 degree incline. 264 00:17:34,420 --> 00:17:38,700 Allied attempts to take it proved disastrous. 265 00:17:38,700 --> 00:17:42,140 The Americans and then the Poles and the British - 266 00:17:42,140 --> 00:17:46,380 everybody gets in on the fight and cannot overcome the objective. 267 00:17:46,380 --> 00:17:50,580 Some 50,000 men are going to die on that mountain 268 00:17:50,580 --> 00:17:53,020 and it's all for nothing. 269 00:17:53,020 --> 00:17:56,580 The enemy possesses the dominating military terrain. 270 00:17:56,580 --> 00:17:59,660 So for the Germans, it's extraordinarily easy 271 00:17:59,660 --> 00:18:02,980 to put up a fight, even with a small force. 272 00:18:02,980 --> 00:18:05,580 So what can the Allies do if they can't go through the mountain, 273 00:18:05,580 --> 00:18:07,860 if they can't go over the mountain? 274 00:18:07,860 --> 00:18:09,340 They can go around the mountain. 275 00:18:09,340 --> 00:18:11,340 So they tried something new. 276 00:18:11,340 --> 00:18:14,180 20th of January 1944, 277 00:18:14,180 --> 00:18:18,420 an Allied force of 374 naval vessels lands 278 00:18:18,420 --> 00:18:21,820 50,000 troops at the beaches at Anzio, 279 00:18:21,820 --> 00:18:26,900 a mere 34 miles south of Rome, which they hope to take in days. 280 00:18:26,900 --> 00:18:30,780 The trouble was their experience at Salerno had taught them 281 00:18:30,780 --> 00:18:32,860 that they shouldn't move too quickly 282 00:18:32,860 --> 00:18:35,340 because the Germans would counterattack very strongly, 283 00:18:35,340 --> 00:18:37,700 so they waited until they had enough force 284 00:18:37,700 --> 00:18:40,460 to move forward in some strength. 285 00:18:40,460 --> 00:18:44,700 Staying put proves a grave misjudgement. 286 00:18:44,700 --> 00:18:48,100 The Allied decision to stall and to wait at Anzio 287 00:18:48,100 --> 00:18:50,420 proves to be an absolute boon for the Germans 288 00:18:50,420 --> 00:18:54,300 who of course can then get men and material to the area. 289 00:18:54,300 --> 00:18:59,500 By the end of the first week there are 71,500 German defenders 290 00:18:59,500 --> 00:19:01,740 in the Anzio area. 291 00:19:01,740 --> 00:19:04,980 Facing them are 68,000 Allied troops, 292 00:19:04,980 --> 00:19:08,180 still clustered round the landing beaches. 293 00:19:09,820 --> 00:19:12,860 The result was stalemate. It was attrition. 294 00:19:12,860 --> 00:19:15,660 The invasion force is held within a beachhead 295 00:19:15,660 --> 00:19:19,140 and that invasion force is still there four months later. 296 00:19:19,140 --> 00:19:24,060 We were in almost a First World War Western Front's situation. 297 00:19:24,060 --> 00:19:29,780 On the 23rd of May, the third US Infantry Division loses 955 men - 298 00:19:29,780 --> 00:19:34,660 the most of any US division throughout the entire war. 299 00:19:34,660 --> 00:19:36,420 Anzio is a bloodbath. 300 00:19:38,500 --> 00:19:41,300 This was some of the most brutal, some of the hardest fighting 301 00:19:41,300 --> 00:19:43,140 of the entire war. 302 00:19:43,140 --> 00:19:46,900 9,203 British and Commonwealth 303 00:19:46,900 --> 00:19:52,220 and 23,860 US troops are killed or wounded at Anzio. 304 00:19:53,780 --> 00:19:55,340 To relieve the remainder, 305 00:19:55,340 --> 00:19:58,820 the Allies have no choice but to capture Monte Casino. 306 00:20:01,500 --> 00:20:03,460 It takes them 123 days, 307 00:20:03,460 --> 00:20:06,220 one massively destructive air bombardment 308 00:20:06,220 --> 00:20:11,420 and four deadly assaults to finally send the Germans into retreat - 309 00:20:11,420 --> 00:20:14,660 leaving the way open for the capture of Rome. 310 00:20:16,020 --> 00:20:20,260 June 1944, Allied forces move into the city of Rome 311 00:20:20,260 --> 00:20:25,220 and we can announce that the first Axis capital has been liberated. 312 00:20:25,220 --> 00:20:29,020 NEWSREEL: First European capital is freed of Nazi tyranny. 313 00:20:29,020 --> 00:20:32,180 Now, in symbolic terms, Rome is very important, 314 00:20:32,180 --> 00:20:34,660 it's the Eternal City, 315 00:20:34,660 --> 00:20:38,900 but strategically it's of no importance really at all. 316 00:20:38,900 --> 00:20:40,700 The government has already surrendered, 317 00:20:40,700 --> 00:20:46,260 the Germans are just able to move back to another defensible point... 318 00:20:46,260 --> 00:20:48,060 and the fight goes on. 319 00:20:48,060 --> 00:20:52,380 Italy becomes a sideshow because the day after Allied tanks 320 00:20:52,380 --> 00:20:55,260 roll into Rome, the largest amphibious force 321 00:20:55,260 --> 00:20:58,180 ever mustered leaves England's South Coast. 322 00:20:58,180 --> 00:20:59,700 Destination - Normandy. 323 00:21:03,020 --> 00:21:09,740 May 1944, in Italy the Allied invasion is about to take Rome 324 00:21:09,740 --> 00:21:13,620 but America has its eye on a far greater prize. 325 00:21:13,620 --> 00:21:15,820 At the beginning of the month of June, 326 00:21:15,820 --> 00:21:18,100 a third front would be opened in Europe 327 00:21:18,100 --> 00:21:21,460 with a cross-channel attack that would deposit 328 00:21:21,460 --> 00:21:24,860 two fighting armies in upper Normandy. 329 00:21:24,860 --> 00:21:27,420 BAND PLAYS 330 00:21:27,420 --> 00:21:31,140 By necessity, the Allied invasion will launch from Britain, 331 00:21:31,140 --> 00:21:34,380 which means that American troops will be based there. 332 00:21:34,380 --> 00:21:36,180 By the end of the war, 333 00:21:36,180 --> 00:21:39,300 fully three million will arrive on her shores. 334 00:21:42,580 --> 00:21:46,820 The arrival of three million American soldiers on British soil 335 00:21:46,820 --> 00:21:50,500 had a huge impact on British society, as you can imagine. 336 00:21:50,500 --> 00:21:52,700 The British used to say the Americans 337 00:21:52,700 --> 00:21:56,340 oversexed, overpaid, over here. 338 00:21:56,340 --> 00:21:58,660 The Americans used to say about the British - 339 00:21:58,660 --> 00:22:02,460 undersexed, underpaid and under Eisenhower. 340 00:22:03,860 --> 00:22:08,060 American General Dwight D Eisenhower is the supreme commander 341 00:22:08,060 --> 00:22:10,460 of Allied Forces in Europe. 342 00:22:10,460 --> 00:22:15,500 He will lead Operation Overlord - D-Day. 343 00:22:15,500 --> 00:22:19,460 Eisenhower has only been a commander for two years now. 344 00:22:19,460 --> 00:22:22,220 But part of the reason that he was chosen was because he had 345 00:22:22,220 --> 00:22:25,060 demonstrated a diplomatic air, 346 00:22:25,060 --> 00:22:27,860 and it was a quality that the Chief of Staff 347 00:22:27,860 --> 00:22:29,820 of the United States Army, George Marshall, 348 00:22:29,820 --> 00:22:33,180 recognised as probably being the most important quality. 349 00:22:33,180 --> 00:22:35,140 When it comes to planning D-Day, 350 00:22:35,140 --> 00:22:38,300 one Allied leader requires more diplomatic handling 351 00:22:38,300 --> 00:22:39,940 than the rest. 352 00:22:39,940 --> 00:22:43,380 Churchill, in particular, had strong doubts throughout 353 00:22:43,380 --> 00:22:45,180 about the wisdom of this invasion. 354 00:22:45,180 --> 00:22:46,940 He's looked at the carnage at Dieppe, 355 00:22:46,940 --> 00:22:48,940 he's looked at the carnage at Salerno 356 00:22:48,940 --> 00:22:51,820 and he just thinks that this landing on a massive scale 357 00:22:51,820 --> 00:22:54,580 is going to meet exactly the same fate. 358 00:22:59,340 --> 00:23:01,980 Commander in Chief of Allied Ground Forces 359 00:23:01,980 --> 00:23:05,460 will be the hero of the British North Africa campaign - 360 00:23:05,460 --> 00:23:07,140 General Bernard Montgomery. 361 00:23:09,380 --> 00:23:13,260 In the planning stages, their first priority is a lack 362 00:23:13,260 --> 00:23:15,100 of vital equipment. 363 00:23:15,100 --> 00:23:18,140 The way that amphibious landing operations succeeded 364 00:23:18,140 --> 00:23:21,820 was by putting angry young men with rifles and bayonets on a beach. 365 00:23:21,820 --> 00:23:24,820 And the best way to do that was with a landing craft. 366 00:23:24,820 --> 00:23:27,700 But so many landing craft have been lost in the Pacific 367 00:23:27,700 --> 00:23:31,940 and Italian campaigns that there is a shortage. 368 00:23:31,940 --> 00:23:34,940 So the Allies order over 30,000 new ones. 369 00:23:36,700 --> 00:23:40,180 Many will be built in a place more famous for its Mardi Gras 370 00:23:40,180 --> 00:23:42,580 than for producing war material. 371 00:23:42,580 --> 00:23:45,660 The city of New Orleans, Louisiana, contributed significantly 372 00:23:45,660 --> 00:23:47,340 to Allied victory in the Second World War 373 00:23:47,340 --> 00:23:49,020 through the production of landing craft 374 00:23:49,020 --> 00:23:50,700 by a company called Higgins Industries. 375 00:23:50,700 --> 00:23:53,820 Higgins Industries has five industrial manufacturing facilities 376 00:23:53,820 --> 00:23:55,820 and he employs 30,000 people. 377 00:23:55,820 --> 00:23:58,380 Higgins was making more of them than anyone else. 378 00:24:00,460 --> 00:24:05,460 The timing of the invasion was being tuned to an additional month 379 00:24:05,460 --> 00:24:08,300 of output from Higgins Industries. 380 00:24:08,300 --> 00:24:12,180 That's how critical this need for landing craft became. 381 00:24:13,940 --> 00:24:18,020 In May '44, Eisenhower and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery 382 00:24:18,020 --> 00:24:23,140 called an above top secret meeting at St Paul's School, London. 383 00:24:23,140 --> 00:24:25,140 This is the unveiling of the invasion plan. 384 00:24:25,140 --> 00:24:28,500 This is where the people that matter are told. 385 00:24:28,500 --> 00:24:31,820 Named Operation Overlord, the invasion will take place 386 00:24:31,820 --> 00:24:33,620 on five Normandy beaches. 387 00:24:34,740 --> 00:24:37,100 They're going to be to beaches where the Americans attack - 388 00:24:37,100 --> 00:24:39,300 Omaha and Utah. 389 00:24:39,300 --> 00:24:42,260 There's going to be one beach where the Canadians attack, Juno, 390 00:24:42,260 --> 00:24:45,180 and then Gold and Sword are the two beaches 391 00:24:45,180 --> 00:24:47,740 where the British are going to attack. 392 00:24:47,740 --> 00:24:51,300 An invasion date is also set, the 5th of June. 393 00:24:52,860 --> 00:24:55,060 To maximise the chances of success, 394 00:24:55,060 --> 00:24:59,420 the Allies must keep these details completely secret. 395 00:24:59,420 --> 00:25:02,660 The capacity of the Germans to inflict damage on the Allies 396 00:25:02,660 --> 00:25:04,540 was going to be very large indeed 397 00:25:04,540 --> 00:25:06,700 if they guessed where the invasion was going to happen 398 00:25:06,700 --> 00:25:09,140 and they had enough forces there. 399 00:25:09,140 --> 00:25:11,140 So to swing the numbers in their favour, 400 00:25:11,140 --> 00:25:13,020 the Allies turn to Black Ops. 401 00:25:14,300 --> 00:25:19,300 The allies came up with an extraordinary deception operation. 402 00:25:19,300 --> 00:25:23,540 Named Operation Fortitude, it is split in two. 403 00:25:23,540 --> 00:25:26,220 Fortitude South tries to persuade the Germans 404 00:25:26,220 --> 00:25:30,260 that the main target of the invasion will be the Pas-de-Calais, 405 00:25:30,260 --> 00:25:33,580 where Hitler has 350,000 troops garrisoned. 406 00:25:34,740 --> 00:25:37,780 Of course, to the Germans it seems totally logical that the Allies 407 00:25:37,780 --> 00:25:39,980 would attack at the Pas-de-Calais - 408 00:25:39,980 --> 00:25:43,460 it's just 21 miles across the Channel from Kent. 409 00:25:43,460 --> 00:25:47,700 So of course it makes total sense from them to believe that. 410 00:25:47,700 --> 00:25:50,580 What the deceivers did was absolutely brilliant. 411 00:25:50,580 --> 00:25:53,940 They build up this kind of totally dummy army, 412 00:25:53,940 --> 00:25:57,340 some of it's made out of nylon props from Shepperton Studios 413 00:25:57,340 --> 00:25:59,660 that makes any German reconnaissance aircraft 414 00:25:59,660 --> 00:26:02,980 think that there are an enormous amount of men and materiel 415 00:26:02,980 --> 00:26:07,540 positioned all over Kent, ready for an attack around Calais. 416 00:26:07,540 --> 00:26:11,020 There were camps full of tents with inflatable tanks, 417 00:26:11,020 --> 00:26:13,940 with inflatable trucks, with inflatable aircraft 418 00:26:13,940 --> 00:26:17,380 occupying airfields that were not actually functioning airfields. 419 00:26:17,380 --> 00:26:19,020 And in fact it's so successful, 420 00:26:19,020 --> 00:26:22,380 the Germans actually tie up a huge number of divisions, 421 00:26:22,380 --> 00:26:25,580 thinking that 30 divisions are going to come across the Channel 422 00:26:25,580 --> 00:26:27,020 from Dover to Calais. 423 00:26:27,020 --> 00:26:28,540 It's a complete charade. 424 00:26:29,700 --> 00:26:34,260 Fortitude North places another ghost army in Scotland. 425 00:26:34,260 --> 00:26:36,700 This one's job is to persuade Hitler that the main invasion 426 00:26:36,700 --> 00:26:38,420 might happen in Norway. 427 00:26:41,660 --> 00:26:45,580 Between them, the deception plans have the capacity to tie down 428 00:26:45,580 --> 00:26:49,820 more than 700,000 troops in Calais and Norway. 429 00:26:52,260 --> 00:26:56,220 It's an absolutely brilliant use of distracting tactics. 430 00:26:58,820 --> 00:27:03,060 Despite Fortitude's success, Allied forces will still face 431 00:27:03,060 --> 00:27:06,340 five million mines and a significant German defence 432 00:27:06,340 --> 00:27:09,260 protected by a bespoke fortification 433 00:27:09,260 --> 00:27:11,460 that Hitler calls his Atlantic Wall. 434 00:27:15,340 --> 00:27:19,940 The Atlantic Wall was a system of integrated German coastal defences 435 00:27:19,940 --> 00:27:24,660 stretching basically from Norway all the way down to the French border 436 00:27:24,660 --> 00:27:27,580 with Spain on the Bay of Biscay. 437 00:27:27,580 --> 00:27:32,500 Hitler ordered the building of the Atlantic Wall in spring 1942. 438 00:27:32,500 --> 00:27:36,780 Over two years, slave labourers used over a million tonnes of steel 439 00:27:36,780 --> 00:27:40,340 and 13 million cubic metres of concrete to build a three tier 440 00:27:40,340 --> 00:27:43,860 fortification system stretching almost 2,000 miles. 441 00:27:45,820 --> 00:27:50,060 The construction of 15,000 separate concrete artillery and machinegun 442 00:27:50,060 --> 00:27:53,980 emplacements will be manned by 300,000 soldiers. 443 00:27:56,060 --> 00:27:59,300 They were armed with anti-tank anti-boat guns, 444 00:27:59,300 --> 00:28:02,460 ranging in calibre from the German 50mm gun 445 00:28:02,460 --> 00:28:06,740 to 75mm guns to the 88mm gun - 446 00:28:06,740 --> 00:28:09,220 particularly the 88mm anti-tank gun. 447 00:28:11,300 --> 00:28:15,100 RAF reconnaissance planes have been busy above the Atlantic Wall. 448 00:28:19,020 --> 00:28:21,900 It's believed that over a million photo reconnaissance images 449 00:28:21,900 --> 00:28:24,900 of the beaches and the inland areas near the beaches were taken 450 00:28:24,900 --> 00:28:27,740 in anticipation of the D-Day landings. 451 00:28:27,740 --> 00:28:31,020 The photographs reveal that each of the designated Allied landing 452 00:28:31,020 --> 00:28:33,020 beaches is defended. 453 00:28:33,020 --> 00:28:36,420 Getting off them will be a living hell. 454 00:28:36,420 --> 00:28:39,940 The Germans have pre-ranged and pre-sighted almost everything - 455 00:28:39,940 --> 00:28:44,340 so that if anything landed in front of any of those resistance nests, 456 00:28:44,340 --> 00:28:47,460 they could distribute either automatic weapons fire 457 00:28:47,460 --> 00:28:52,460 very effectively, or they could drop mortar fire on top of those targets. 458 00:28:52,460 --> 00:28:55,260 And in fact what we see on D-Day is that despite what the movies 459 00:28:55,260 --> 00:28:57,740 would have you believe, it's not really machine guns 460 00:28:57,740 --> 00:28:59,380 that are doing the most killing, 461 00:28:59,380 --> 00:29:02,540 it's mortars that are doing the most killing. 462 00:29:05,780 --> 00:29:09,460 In the two months before D-Day, the RAF and US Air Force 463 00:29:09,460 --> 00:29:13,380 engaged in a concerted campaign against strategic targets. 464 00:29:13,380 --> 00:29:15,900 GUNFIRE 465 00:29:19,100 --> 00:29:24,780 Come D-Day, the Germans only have 815 serviceable aircraft 466 00:29:24,780 --> 00:29:27,380 that can be used against the Allies. 467 00:29:27,380 --> 00:29:29,980 The Allies meanwhile have a ratio 468 00:29:29,980 --> 00:29:33,740 of 14 to one superiority over them. 469 00:29:33,740 --> 00:29:35,580 That's a huge mismatch. 470 00:29:35,580 --> 00:29:39,660 They're aided by the French Resistance. 471 00:29:39,660 --> 00:29:43,380 A total of 74 bridges and tunnels are destroyed 472 00:29:43,380 --> 00:29:46,060 in the month leading up to D-Day. 473 00:29:46,060 --> 00:29:50,820 By early June, rail traffic is cut by two thirds. 474 00:29:50,820 --> 00:29:54,220 And as a result, the German response to D-Day 475 00:29:54,220 --> 00:29:57,340 was much less effective than it ought to have been. 476 00:29:58,940 --> 00:30:01,020 Everything is ready, 477 00:30:01,020 --> 00:30:04,940 but the allies are still not certain of success. 478 00:30:04,940 --> 00:30:09,420 General Eisenhower is so unsure that he writes a letter 479 00:30:09,420 --> 00:30:12,020 taking the blame for the failure of the assault 480 00:30:12,020 --> 00:30:15,580 and keeps it in his pocket in case it all goes wrong. 481 00:30:20,420 --> 00:30:22,620 6th of June 1944. 482 00:30:23,980 --> 00:30:26,340 At 3.30, Eisenhower wakes up. 483 00:30:26,340 --> 00:30:29,020 Outside, it's wind, it's rain. 484 00:30:29,020 --> 00:30:31,260 This is far from ideal for an invasion 485 00:30:31,260 --> 00:30:33,460 but the weather man James Stagg says to him, 486 00:30:33,460 --> 00:30:34,900 "It's going to clear. 487 00:30:34,900 --> 00:30:37,260 "It's going to clear in about 30 minutes." 488 00:30:37,260 --> 00:30:41,460 Eisenhower then has to make the biggest decision of his life. 489 00:30:41,460 --> 00:30:44,420 "OK, let's go," he says. 490 00:30:44,420 --> 00:30:47,820 Bad weather has already caused an abortive launch. 491 00:30:47,820 --> 00:30:51,140 But today, the first ships of the Allied armada set sail 492 00:30:51,140 --> 00:30:53,700 for Normandy. 493 00:30:53,700 --> 00:30:57,860 They have a 100-mile journey and will arrive later that morning. 494 00:30:59,620 --> 00:31:03,340 Rommel, who was the man responsible for the Atlantic Wall defences 495 00:31:03,340 --> 00:31:04,940 isn't ready to go. 496 00:31:04,940 --> 00:31:06,380 In fact, he's not even there. 497 00:31:06,380 --> 00:31:09,780 He's celebrating his wife's birthday in Germany. 498 00:31:10,900 --> 00:31:14,620 While the bulk of German defenders sleep, 499 00:31:14,620 --> 00:31:17,500 the Allies are preparing to clear a path off the beaches 500 00:31:17,500 --> 00:31:21,180 for their vast army of tanks and trucks. 501 00:31:21,180 --> 00:31:25,820 Six and a half hours before the land invasion starts, 502 00:31:25,820 --> 00:31:30,660 you have three gliders containing 181 British paratroopers 503 00:31:30,660 --> 00:31:34,460 landing less than 50 yards from Pegasus Bridge. 504 00:31:36,580 --> 00:31:38,780 Elements of the 6th Airborne Division, 505 00:31:38,780 --> 00:31:41,780 particularly the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, 506 00:31:41,780 --> 00:31:44,540 conduct a coup de main aerial assault using gliders 507 00:31:44,540 --> 00:31:48,260 during which they capture the two bridges across the Caen Canal 508 00:31:48,260 --> 00:31:49,780 and the Orne River. 509 00:31:49,780 --> 00:31:53,740 They capture them intact in a very, very daring predawn attack. 510 00:31:55,180 --> 00:31:59,620 It's an incredibly successful attack but it's not without casualties. 511 00:32:01,260 --> 00:32:03,980 Lieutenant Brotheridge is mortally wounded 512 00:32:03,980 --> 00:32:05,660 trying to get across the bridge. 513 00:32:05,660 --> 00:32:09,260 And in fact he is the first man to die as a result 514 00:32:09,260 --> 00:32:11,500 of enemy fire on D-Day. 515 00:32:12,780 --> 00:32:16,460 The number of ships steaming toward France is by far the largest 516 00:32:16,460 --> 00:32:18,260 fleet to ever put to sea. 517 00:32:19,380 --> 00:32:21,580 The Allied armada is big. 518 00:32:21,580 --> 00:32:26,620 You've got almost 7,000 ships coming across in all different forms - 519 00:32:26,620 --> 00:32:31,460 such as cruisers, destroyers, battleships, landing vessels 520 00:32:31,460 --> 00:32:33,940 and you've got another 277 minesweepers. 521 00:32:33,940 --> 00:32:35,180 That's a lot. 522 00:32:35,180 --> 00:32:38,340 And they were all heading for these five beaches. 523 00:32:39,900 --> 00:32:43,180 05.45 hours, June 6th 1944. 524 00:32:45,300 --> 00:32:48,420 The gathered battleships of the D-Day armada began a massive 525 00:32:48,420 --> 00:32:52,700 bombardment of the Atlantic Wall's big guns. 526 00:32:52,700 --> 00:32:55,540 The first thing to do is that you've got to take out the big guns 527 00:32:55,540 --> 00:32:57,260 on the beaches. 528 00:32:57,260 --> 00:33:00,980 Meanwhile, troop landing craft and minesweepers start heading 529 00:33:00,980 --> 00:33:02,300 for the beaches. 530 00:33:06,420 --> 00:33:08,340 The Allied invasion has begun. 531 00:33:14,620 --> 00:33:19,980 More than 4,000 landing craft are about to deliver 156,000 troops 532 00:33:19,980 --> 00:33:21,700 to the Normandy beaches. 533 00:33:24,060 --> 00:33:26,660 To ensure as many of them as possible survive, 534 00:33:26,660 --> 00:33:28,860 supporting naval artillery fire must target 535 00:33:28,860 --> 00:33:31,660 shoreline anti-personnel defences. 536 00:33:33,460 --> 00:33:37,340 You have this ungoverned fire at whatever you want to 537 00:33:37,340 --> 00:33:38,980 from 5.45 to 6.30 538 00:33:38,980 --> 00:33:40,700 and then stop at 6.30 539 00:33:40,700 --> 00:33:43,820 and then you'll start getting radio calls where you're delivering fire 540 00:33:43,820 --> 00:33:46,300 on map coordinates with great precision, 541 00:33:46,300 --> 00:33:49,340 so as not to endanger your own troops. 542 00:33:49,340 --> 00:33:52,740 The bombardment's called in by naval shore fire control parties 543 00:33:52,740 --> 00:33:55,940 on Gold, Sword, Utah and Juno beaches 544 00:33:55,940 --> 00:33:57,940 are relatively successful. 545 00:33:59,460 --> 00:34:02,460 But for the Americans landing at Omaha Beach, 546 00:34:02,460 --> 00:34:04,460 it's a very different story. 547 00:34:05,940 --> 00:34:08,140 One of the main reasons was that troops stepped off 548 00:34:08,140 --> 00:34:11,300 of their landing craft into water that was this deep in some cases. 549 00:34:11,300 --> 00:34:14,020 And so if you have the SCR-300 radio, 550 00:34:14,020 --> 00:34:16,220 that they called the walkie talkie, 551 00:34:16,220 --> 00:34:18,540 on your back, the radio's soaking wet, 552 00:34:18,540 --> 00:34:20,820 it's not going to function when you reach the beach. 553 00:34:20,820 --> 00:34:24,300 The lack of radio contact leave supporting naval vessels 554 00:34:24,300 --> 00:34:27,100 unable to locate their targets. 555 00:34:27,100 --> 00:34:29,260 They can't fire a single shot because they might kill 556 00:34:29,260 --> 00:34:30,780 our own people. 557 00:34:30,780 --> 00:34:32,940 The biggest fighting position on Omaha Beach 558 00:34:32,940 --> 00:34:34,940 was the WN62 bunker complex. 559 00:34:34,940 --> 00:34:37,140 That position was killing, actively killing, 560 00:34:37,140 --> 00:34:41,860 men of the 1st Infantry Division from 0630 until about 10 O'clock. 561 00:34:43,580 --> 00:34:48,620 The taking of Omaha Beach costs 2,000 American lives, 562 00:34:48,620 --> 00:34:52,100 compared to just 197 at neighbouring Utah. 563 00:34:55,460 --> 00:34:59,100 Fighting is fierce along the entire coastline. 564 00:35:01,460 --> 00:35:05,860 But the Allied troops finally make it off their beaches. 565 00:35:05,860 --> 00:35:08,180 It's cost 9,000 casualties. 566 00:35:09,820 --> 00:35:14,540 But five days later, 326,000 men, 567 00:35:14,540 --> 00:35:19,220 54,000 vehicles and 140,000 tonnes of supplies 568 00:35:19,220 --> 00:35:21,060 have made it ashore. 569 00:35:22,780 --> 00:35:27,580 But that's only a fraction of the entire invasion force. 570 00:35:27,580 --> 00:35:30,420 To land the rest, the allies need a port. 571 00:35:32,260 --> 00:35:33,740 The nearest is Cherbourg. 572 00:35:37,340 --> 00:35:39,900 Three complete infantry divisions, 573 00:35:39,900 --> 00:35:42,540 each one numbering almost 15,000 men, 574 00:35:42,540 --> 00:35:47,020 are descending down from the heights into the outskirts of the city. 575 00:35:47,020 --> 00:35:49,260 And then they bring up the three battleships - 576 00:35:49,260 --> 00:35:51,820 USS Texas, USS Arkansas, USS Nevada - 577 00:35:51,820 --> 00:35:55,780 and they bombard the waterfront simultaneous to three divisions 578 00:35:55,780 --> 00:35:58,140 manoeuvring into an urban battle. 579 00:35:58,140 --> 00:36:00,340 The Americans think they're going to take it quite easily. 580 00:36:00,340 --> 00:36:03,580 But the whole assault takes about eight days, during which time 581 00:36:03,580 --> 00:36:06,540 the Germans just decide to completely trash it. 582 00:36:06,540 --> 00:36:09,660 Cherbourg is basically obliterated. 583 00:36:09,660 --> 00:36:13,460 To allow the Americans time to build up a force large enough to break out 584 00:36:13,460 --> 00:36:15,140 and head south, 585 00:36:15,140 --> 00:36:19,580 Montgomery launches a head-on attack on the town of Caen. 586 00:36:19,580 --> 00:36:22,100 The Germans are so dug in that it's almost impossible 587 00:36:22,100 --> 00:36:24,460 to winkle them out. 588 00:36:24,460 --> 00:36:25,820 In the suburbs of Caen 589 00:36:25,820 --> 00:36:30,540 you've got a real war of attrition starting to develop. 590 00:36:30,540 --> 00:36:34,820 It takes 1,800 heavy bombers carpet bombing the German line 591 00:36:34,820 --> 00:36:37,980 with 4,200 tonnes of bombs 592 00:36:37,980 --> 00:36:40,780 to blast a way through in Operation Cobra. 593 00:36:46,660 --> 00:36:49,460 By July 24th, losses are almost even. 594 00:36:51,060 --> 00:36:56,540 122,000 Allied troops have been killed wounded or captured, 595 00:36:56,540 --> 00:36:58,740 compared to 114,000 German. 596 00:37:00,740 --> 00:37:04,540 But while the Allies are being heavily reinforced from England, 597 00:37:04,540 --> 00:37:07,980 little more than 10,000 German replacements have been sent. 598 00:37:10,420 --> 00:37:13,100 The Allies are also winning the numbers game because Hitler 599 00:37:13,100 --> 00:37:17,260 is still under the spell of Operation Fortitude's Ghost Army. 600 00:37:21,620 --> 00:37:25,540 There are five armoured divisions and 19 infantry divisions 601 00:37:25,540 --> 00:37:28,020 in the vicinity of the Pas-de-Calais. 602 00:37:28,020 --> 00:37:31,780 That's a force of 350,000 men who could have joined 603 00:37:31,780 --> 00:37:34,580 the Normandy battle, but did not. 604 00:37:34,580 --> 00:37:38,300 In typical fashion, Hitler orders his depleted forces to launch 605 00:37:38,300 --> 00:37:42,500 a counterattack centred on the town of Mortain. 606 00:37:42,500 --> 00:37:43,380 It's a fatal error. 607 00:37:48,420 --> 00:37:51,220 17th July 1944. 608 00:37:51,220 --> 00:37:54,700 German commander Erwin Rommel fractures his skull when his car 609 00:37:54,700 --> 00:37:57,780 is strafed en route back to headquarters. 610 00:37:57,780 --> 00:38:02,380 So the Desert Fox is replaced by Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge, 611 00:38:02,380 --> 00:38:07,700 who will preside over the defining moment in the battle for Normandy. 612 00:38:07,700 --> 00:38:11,460 It happens when the Mortain offensive grinds to a halt 613 00:38:11,460 --> 00:38:12,860 near the town of Falaise. 614 00:38:12,860 --> 00:38:15,260 The Mortain counter-offensive was meant 615 00:38:15,260 --> 00:38:17,540 to relieve some of the pressure on the Germans, and instead 616 00:38:17,540 --> 00:38:19,700 what it does is it creates circumstances 617 00:38:19,700 --> 00:38:21,860 where the Germans overexpose. 618 00:38:21,860 --> 00:38:24,380 Montgomery sees an opportunity. 619 00:38:24,380 --> 00:38:28,300 The German advance into what becomes known as the Falaise Pocket creates 620 00:38:28,300 --> 00:38:33,140 the opportunity for the Allies to trap nigh on 200,000 German troops. 621 00:38:36,860 --> 00:38:39,660 The idea is that you get the British and Canadians to pin them 622 00:38:39,660 --> 00:38:44,180 down at Falaise, and then you get the US Third Army to encircle them 623 00:38:44,180 --> 00:38:46,100 and to stop them escaping. 624 00:38:46,100 --> 00:38:47,780 Patton breaks around, 625 00:38:47,780 --> 00:38:51,300 slides around their flanks, comes up from the south 626 00:38:51,300 --> 00:38:54,100 with General Leclerc and the French 2nd Armored Division, 627 00:38:54,100 --> 00:38:56,420 and that ever-closing pocket begins to tighten. 628 00:38:56,420 --> 00:38:59,100 And suddenly it's clear the Germans have got to get out. 629 00:38:59,100 --> 00:39:00,940 Otherwise they were going to be caught, 630 00:39:00,940 --> 00:39:02,220 they were going to encircled. 631 00:39:02,220 --> 00:39:04,500 The encirclement is not quite complete, 632 00:39:04,500 --> 00:39:08,780 so Field Marshal von Kluge orders a retreat through the gap. 633 00:39:08,780 --> 00:39:13,460 He is immediately relieved of command by an enraged Hitler. 634 00:39:13,460 --> 00:39:16,860 For the men left trapped inside the Falaise Pocket, 635 00:39:16,860 --> 00:39:19,740 a change of leadership cannot stave off the inevitable bloodbath. 636 00:39:23,980 --> 00:39:28,940 45,000 Germans are taken prisoner and about 10,000 lie dead. 637 00:39:30,140 --> 00:39:32,540 Eisenhower went and saw it for himself and he said 638 00:39:32,540 --> 00:39:35,380 it's one of the worst killing fields that he had ever seen. 639 00:39:37,140 --> 00:39:41,940 Despite the numbers, Falaise feels like a missed opportunity. 640 00:39:41,940 --> 00:39:44,940 The pocket could have been closed if the allies had moved faster 641 00:39:44,940 --> 00:39:47,660 and more firmly. A lot stream out. 642 00:39:48,820 --> 00:39:52,580 About 40,000 German troops make it out of the pocket. 643 00:39:53,860 --> 00:39:55,700 They're literally running for their lives, 644 00:39:55,700 --> 00:39:58,860 and most of them don't even have any weapons. 645 00:39:58,860 --> 00:40:02,100 They're rushing for the River Seine, and many of them manage to cross it 646 00:40:02,100 --> 00:40:05,020 but they're lashed together on cider barrels, 647 00:40:05,020 --> 00:40:06,500 some are trying to swim. 648 00:40:06,500 --> 00:40:10,340 They're absolutely desperate to get to safety. 649 00:40:10,340 --> 00:40:15,780 The Germans do not have the numbers to cope with the overwhelming Allied advance. 650 00:40:15,780 --> 00:40:18,060 The battle for Normandy is over. 651 00:40:22,160 --> 00:40:25,880 And on the Eastern Front, Stalin's generals are about to deliver 652 00:40:25,880 --> 00:40:30,120 an even more devastating blow against the beleaguered Nazis. 653 00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:38,280 22nd June 1944 - 654 00:40:38,280 --> 00:40:42,440 three years to the day since Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa. 655 00:40:45,520 --> 00:40:49,520 Today a long line stretching over 900 miles, from Odessa 656 00:40:49,520 --> 00:40:52,560 in the south to Leningrad in the north, 657 00:40:52,560 --> 00:40:54,920 Stalin unleashes Operation Bagration. 658 00:40:58,520 --> 00:41:01,880 Operation Bagration is quite possibly the most successful 659 00:41:01,880 --> 00:41:03,840 offensive that you've never heard of. 660 00:41:03,840 --> 00:41:06,880 It's significant in its timing in two respects. 661 00:41:06,880 --> 00:41:13,360 It's timed to coincide, broadly speaking, with the D-Day landings. 662 00:41:13,360 --> 00:41:17,600 But it's symbolic in another sense in that it's timed to coincide 663 00:41:17,600 --> 00:41:21,520 with the date upon which the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union 664 00:41:21,520 --> 00:41:23,120 back in 1941. 665 00:41:23,120 --> 00:41:24,760 Finally this is Stalin now going, 666 00:41:24,760 --> 00:41:29,040 "I'm going to get my own back in an equally devastating manner." 667 00:41:29,040 --> 00:41:31,360 It was named Bagration after the prince 668 00:41:31,360 --> 00:41:34,440 who'd harried Napoleon's forces from Moscow in 1812. 669 00:41:36,440 --> 00:41:38,040 15 Soviet armies, 670 00:41:38,040 --> 00:41:43,800 numbering 1,670,000 soldiers, are secretly assembled. 671 00:41:43,800 --> 00:41:48,680 They're supported by more than 6,000 tanks and over 30,000 guns 672 00:41:48,680 --> 00:41:51,080 and Katyusha rocket batteries. 673 00:41:51,080 --> 00:41:54,160 They had so much artillery that the Red Army could stretch 674 00:41:54,160 --> 00:42:01,160 400 artillery pieces per mile for a front 350 miles long. 675 00:42:01,160 --> 00:42:03,000 That's a lot of firepower. 676 00:42:04,760 --> 00:42:07,560 Because the Luftwaffe has been withdrawn to Normandy 677 00:42:07,560 --> 00:42:09,520 and the defence of Berlin, 678 00:42:09,520 --> 00:42:12,480 the Russians also enjoy total air superiority. 679 00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:17,640 So they deploy more than 7,500 aircraft at will, 680 00:42:17,640 --> 00:42:19,840 including their Sturmovik dive-bomber. 681 00:42:23,240 --> 00:42:26,280 There were waves of Sturmoviks dive bombing the enemy, 682 00:42:26,280 --> 00:42:28,000 then the infantry were moving forward 683 00:42:28,000 --> 00:42:31,240 and simply encircling those who remained. 684 00:42:31,240 --> 00:42:34,600 They were essentially reinventing blitzkrieg for their own purposes. 685 00:42:34,600 --> 00:42:37,360 Hitler was not a man who liked his soldiers to retreat, 686 00:42:37,360 --> 00:42:39,920 and so often they were just stuck defenceless 687 00:42:39,920 --> 00:42:42,360 and, actually, their worst enemy wasn't Stalin, 688 00:42:42,360 --> 00:42:43,920 it was Hitler himself. 689 00:42:49,400 --> 00:42:53,640 Operation Bagration is so devastating that by the time 690 00:42:53,640 --> 00:42:57,840 it stops outside Warsaw on 7th August 1944, 691 00:42:57,840 --> 00:43:02,080 the Red Army has advanced 450 miles, 692 00:43:02,080 --> 00:43:05,640 retaken the key cities Vitebsk, Minsk and Vilnius, 693 00:43:05,640 --> 00:43:09,040 cut off Riga in the north and pushed into Poland 694 00:43:09,040 --> 00:43:11,680 to seize the towns of Lublin and Lwow. 695 00:43:11,680 --> 00:43:15,160 Bagration captures or destroys over 2,000 tanks... 696 00:43:16,920 --> 00:43:20,600 ..more than 10,000 guns and 57,000 vehicles. 697 00:43:22,040 --> 00:43:26,480 It happens in the same month as the Falaise Gap assault 698 00:43:26,480 --> 00:43:28,680 by the Allies over in France, 699 00:43:28,680 --> 00:43:33,040 and it actually captures ten times more troops than that. 700 00:43:34,120 --> 00:43:39,000 This almost knocks out completely Hitler's Army Group Centre. 701 00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:41,560 It's an absolutely devastating blow. 702 00:43:48,080 --> 00:43:52,320 By the end of 1944 Hitler had lost 703 00:43:52,320 --> 00:43:55,800 many more than a million men in Russia and France. 704 00:43:57,440 --> 00:43:59,360 And he had no way of replacing them. 705 00:43:59,360 --> 00:44:00,920 The Americans and the Soviets, 706 00:44:00,920 --> 00:44:04,680 on the other hand, had no problem replacing men. 707 00:44:04,680 --> 00:44:07,400 The numbers are completely against him. 708 00:44:07,400 --> 00:44:10,800 But Hitler stubbornly refuses to give up. 709 00:44:10,800 --> 00:44:16,840 Hitler's got one more kind of blitzkrieg-shaped ace up his sleeve. 710 00:44:16,840 --> 00:44:21,040 And if that doesn't work, he's going to take down the whole 711 00:44:21,040 --> 00:44:22,560 German people with him. 712 00:44:24,000 --> 00:44:26,480 While on the other side of the world, 713 00:44:26,480 --> 00:44:29,280 the Japanese high command will do everything in their power 714 00:44:29,280 --> 00:44:32,840 to convince the Americans that invading Japan is not worth 715 00:44:32,840 --> 00:44:34,360 the cost in manpower... 716 00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:40,240 ..and pay the ultimate price when they get what they wish for. 717 00:44:48,160 --> 00:44:51,240 On 19th March 1945 718 00:44:51,240 --> 00:44:53,960 Adolf Hitler issues one of the most chilling orders 719 00:44:53,960 --> 00:44:56,400 of his entire regime. 720 00:44:56,400 --> 00:44:59,760 Demolitions on Reich Territory authorised all German units 721 00:44:59,760 --> 00:45:03,200 to destroy everything that could provide any assistance 722 00:45:03,200 --> 00:45:05,080 to the approaching enemy - 723 00:45:05,080 --> 00:45:09,320 bridges, roads, all industrial and factory infrastructure. 724 00:45:11,280 --> 00:45:14,600 Thankfully, most German commanders ignored that order, 725 00:45:14,600 --> 00:45:18,560 or else it would have condemned Germany to total devastation. 726 00:45:18,560 --> 00:45:20,760 And that appears to have been the point. 727 00:45:20,760 --> 00:45:25,000 The day before the order, Hitler told Albert Speer that if the war 728 00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:27,440 is lost, the German people are lost. 729 00:45:27,440 --> 00:45:30,840 The idea of the Volk was lost. 730 00:45:30,840 --> 00:45:33,080 By being defeated, the German Volk 731 00:45:33,080 --> 00:45:35,680 had shown itself to be the weaker nation. 732 00:45:35,680 --> 00:45:38,280 It actually deserved to be destroyed. 733 00:45:39,480 --> 00:45:44,280 You could say that Hitler was lost in his own personal Wagnerian opera. 734 00:45:44,280 --> 00:45:48,480 He was plunging Germany into the twilight of the gods. 735 00:45:48,480 --> 00:45:51,000 It's a total act of narcissism. 736 00:45:51,000 --> 00:45:56,120 If Hitler fails, then the nation, the people, they have failed him 737 00:45:56,120 --> 00:45:58,760 and they must fall with him. 738 00:45:58,760 --> 00:46:01,760 This was one last conflagration. 739 00:46:01,760 --> 00:46:05,600 One last act that results in the destruction of everything. 740 00:46:05,600 --> 00:46:07,440 And Hitler is not alone. 741 00:46:07,440 --> 00:46:10,560 Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the Japanese 742 00:46:10,560 --> 00:46:14,920 high command is absolutely intent on fighting to the bitter end, 743 00:46:14,920 --> 00:46:17,760 no matter what the cost might be. 744 00:46:17,760 --> 00:46:21,560 It would take an act of Wagnerian proportions to get them to 745 00:46:21,560 --> 00:46:23,240 snap out of that line of thinking. 746 00:46:24,480 --> 00:46:26,400 Even in defeat, 747 00:46:26,400 --> 00:46:29,600 the men who caused this war are preparing to sacrifice their 748 00:46:29,600 --> 00:46:32,080 own people in apocalyptic numbers. 749 00:46:36,880 --> 00:46:41,160 Between 24th July and 3rd August 1943, 750 00:46:41,160 --> 00:46:45,360 more than 2,300 Allied bombers turned the German industrial city 751 00:46:45,360 --> 00:46:48,000 of Hamburg into an inferno. 752 00:46:50,480 --> 00:46:55,840 In every way, Operation Gomorrah brings the totality of modern 753 00:46:55,840 --> 00:46:58,680 strategic bombing to the city of Hamburg, 754 00:46:58,680 --> 00:47:01,760 mainly because of the use of incendiary weapons. 755 00:47:03,840 --> 00:47:06,040 In just four raids the Allies 756 00:47:06,040 --> 00:47:09,440 drop something like 9,000 tonnes of bombs. 757 00:47:09,440 --> 00:47:12,840 45,000 people were killed. 758 00:47:12,840 --> 00:47:14,840 Three quarters of the city was destroyed. 759 00:47:14,840 --> 00:47:17,600 Something like a million people were left homeless. 760 00:47:17,600 --> 00:47:19,360 45,000 people dead - 761 00:47:19,360 --> 00:47:23,200 that's more than were killed during the entire Blitz. 762 00:47:23,200 --> 00:47:26,120 After Operation Gomorrah, Albert Speer turned to Adolf Hitler 763 00:47:26,120 --> 00:47:30,760 and told him, "If there are six more of these, we're done." 764 00:47:30,760 --> 00:47:34,280 Fortunately for the Nazis, the British didn't have the capacity 765 00:47:34,280 --> 00:47:38,200 to mount many more of these raids in 1943. 766 00:47:38,200 --> 00:47:41,280 What turned the tide was a new kind of plane introduced 767 00:47:41,280 --> 00:47:43,520 by the Allies in 1944. 768 00:47:44,760 --> 00:47:46,320 This wasn't a bomber. 769 00:47:46,320 --> 00:47:47,800 It was a fighter. 770 00:47:47,800 --> 00:47:50,040 The P-51 Mustang. 771 00:47:50,040 --> 00:47:52,760 I think the most important contribution made by the 772 00:47:52,760 --> 00:47:54,160 Allied Bomber Offensive 773 00:47:54,160 --> 00:47:57,920 was the long-range Mustang escort fighter, which proved 774 00:47:57,920 --> 00:48:02,880 able to out-fight any German fighter in the air over Germany. 775 00:48:02,880 --> 00:48:06,600 It's powered by the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, 776 00:48:06,600 --> 00:48:08,800 which makes it a superior performer. 777 00:48:08,800 --> 00:48:13,920 It's armed with six AN/M2 50 calibre machine guns, which provides 778 00:48:13,920 --> 00:48:17,360 a lot of muscle for the aircraft for strafing missions and then also 779 00:48:17,360 --> 00:48:18,880 for aerial intercept. 780 00:48:18,880 --> 00:48:21,440 But crucially, it can be equipped with long-range fuel tanks 781 00:48:21,440 --> 00:48:24,720 that could be jettisoned when empty, and these increased its range 782 00:48:24,720 --> 00:48:26,920 to something like 1,600 miles. 783 00:48:28,480 --> 00:48:32,520 This meant that they could escort Allied bombers all the way 784 00:48:32,520 --> 00:48:34,400 to Germany and back. 785 00:48:34,400 --> 00:48:38,440 More than 15,000 P-51 Mustangs were produced 786 00:48:38,440 --> 00:48:40,640 by the end of the war. 787 00:48:40,640 --> 00:48:46,520 Allied bomber losses fell from almost 10% to a mere 3.5%. 788 00:48:46,520 --> 00:48:49,800 The Allied bombing campaign could now rain down hell 789 00:48:49,800 --> 00:48:51,000 on German cities. 790 00:48:52,880 --> 00:48:56,400 In the last 12 months of the war, the Allies dropped something like 791 00:48:56,400 --> 00:49:01,520 30 to 40 times as many bombs on German targets as the total tonnage 792 00:49:01,520 --> 00:49:05,440 of bombs dropped by the Germans in the Blitz. 793 00:49:05,440 --> 00:49:09,880 Cities like Dresden, Essen, Cologne, Bremen and Berlin 794 00:49:09,880 --> 00:49:14,120 are targeted again and again by up to 1000 bombers, 795 00:49:14,120 --> 00:49:16,640 with a terrible toll on civilian life. 796 00:49:17,800 --> 00:49:22,240 They realised what they had to find was a series of vulnerable targets, 797 00:49:22,240 --> 00:49:23,640 and they chose communications, 798 00:49:23,640 --> 00:49:27,360 they chose chemicals, they choose synthetic oil, and they focused 799 00:49:27,360 --> 00:49:29,760 all their effort on those targets. 800 00:49:31,040 --> 00:49:35,320 These are important strategic centres for bombing but, at the same 801 00:49:35,320 --> 00:49:38,520 time, they're also areas where enormous numbers of civilians live. 802 00:49:38,520 --> 00:49:41,040 So by attacking these areas, and in some cases obliterating 803 00:49:41,040 --> 00:49:43,440 these areas, 804 00:49:43,440 --> 00:49:47,680 is it right to kill enormous numbers of civilians when you are also 805 00:49:47,680 --> 00:49:50,760 targeting Germany's ability to fight the war? 806 00:49:52,920 --> 00:49:54,640 In 1945, 807 00:49:54,640 --> 00:49:58,560 an Allied post-war study of the bombing campaign concludes 808 00:49:58,560 --> 00:50:01,800 that less than 17% of Germany's industrial capacity 809 00:50:01,800 --> 00:50:04,560 had been affected by the bombs. 810 00:50:04,560 --> 00:50:07,840 Albert Speer would not have agreed. 811 00:50:07,840 --> 00:50:11,680 He concludes that as a result of Allied bombing there are 812 00:50:11,680 --> 00:50:16,440 35% fewer tanks, 31% fewer airplanes, 813 00:50:16,440 --> 00:50:21,680 and 42% fewer trucks available to the German military. 814 00:50:21,680 --> 00:50:25,040 Perhaps most importantly, a third of all artillery production 815 00:50:25,040 --> 00:50:28,240 had to be given over to anti-aircraft guns. 816 00:50:28,240 --> 00:50:32,680 Three quarters of the Flak 88 millimetre guns that Germany had 817 00:50:32,680 --> 00:50:36,360 had been pulled back into Germany to defend the airspace, 818 00:50:36,360 --> 00:50:39,720 so they weren't able to participate in the fighting in the east, 819 00:50:39,720 --> 00:50:44,240 they weren't able to oppose Allied forces in Normandy, 820 00:50:44,240 --> 00:50:47,800 and that was the most effective general-purpose weapon 821 00:50:47,800 --> 00:50:49,120 that Germany had. 822 00:50:49,120 --> 00:50:52,880 The critical thing came in 1944 with the switch in 823 00:50:52,880 --> 00:50:56,200 American Eighth Air Force strategy, where they focused 824 00:50:56,200 --> 00:51:00,960 all their effort to starve the German forces of oil and to disrupt 825 00:51:00,960 --> 00:51:04,040 communications to such an extent that it was no longer possible 826 00:51:04,040 --> 00:51:07,240 for the German war economy to function effectively. 827 00:51:07,240 --> 00:51:10,560 From that point on, the bombing campaign had a profound effect 828 00:51:10,560 --> 00:51:12,280 on the German war effort, 829 00:51:12,280 --> 00:51:15,680 as Albert Speer grimly confirmed to his Fuhrer. 830 00:51:15,680 --> 00:51:20,280 This is a man who had increased production threefold between 1941, 831 00:51:20,280 --> 00:51:22,480 when he took over, and 1943. 832 00:51:22,480 --> 00:51:25,280 And he has concluded that Germany 833 00:51:25,280 --> 00:51:29,480 has lost the war of industry as a result of Allied bombing. 834 00:51:30,600 --> 00:51:34,600 They did so at a cost of over 600,000 civilian lives. 835 00:51:36,240 --> 00:51:40,160 Whether that terrible civilian death toll made it all worthwhile, 836 00:51:40,160 --> 00:51:43,480 that's something everybody must judge for themselves. 837 00:51:43,480 --> 00:51:48,880 This is the last thing Adolf Hitler wants to hear in January 1945, 838 00:51:48,880 --> 00:51:52,880 because just one month earlier he'd staked everything he had on one 839 00:51:52,880 --> 00:51:54,640 last throw of the dice, 840 00:51:54,640 --> 00:51:57,960 which, if it succeeded, would turn the war on its head. 841 00:51:59,520 --> 00:52:03,080 16th December 1944. 842 00:52:03,080 --> 00:52:06,440 Allied forces are racing across Europe towards the Rhine. 843 00:52:06,440 --> 00:52:09,800 They're quite strung out, but Allied high command isn't 844 00:52:09,800 --> 00:52:13,240 particularly concerned because there isn't a great enemy presence 845 00:52:13,240 --> 00:52:14,960 in the area. 846 00:52:14,960 --> 00:52:17,280 Allied intelligence is wrong. 847 00:52:17,280 --> 00:52:21,480 Hiding in the forest of the Ardennes are 17 German divisions, 848 00:52:21,480 --> 00:52:24,080 including five Panzer divisions. 849 00:52:24,080 --> 00:52:27,200 Something in the region of 240,000 men. 850 00:52:28,520 --> 00:52:32,400 Some of these contain the new Tiger II heavy Panzer. 851 00:52:32,400 --> 00:52:37,680 This is the Tiger II, the so-called King Tiger or Royal Tiger. 852 00:52:37,680 --> 00:52:41,480 It's got frontal armour of 185 millimetres. 853 00:52:41,480 --> 00:52:43,640 That's seven inches. 854 00:52:43,640 --> 00:52:45,360 And that gun, 855 00:52:45,360 --> 00:52:49,840 it's the long 88, and it means that if that tank can see you 856 00:52:49,840 --> 00:52:52,840 on the battlefield, there was nothing the Allies 857 00:52:52,840 --> 00:52:56,520 have that can resist one of those rounds. 858 00:52:56,520 --> 00:53:00,400 Hitler wants these in large numbers, but they're difficult 859 00:53:00,400 --> 00:53:02,120 and slow to manufacture. 860 00:53:03,400 --> 00:53:07,320 On the morning of 16th December, this scratch force launches 861 00:53:07,320 --> 00:53:10,600 a surprise attack on six weak American divisions 862 00:53:10,600 --> 00:53:15,000 containing 83,000 men recuperating in the Ardennes Gap. 863 00:53:16,560 --> 00:53:19,760 The initial German advance creates a bulge in the Allied line 864 00:53:19,760 --> 00:53:23,800 40 miles deep, which gives the battle its name - 865 00:53:23,800 --> 00:53:26,680 the Battle of the Bulge. 866 00:53:26,680 --> 00:53:29,480 At the outset of the battle, the Germans appear well 867 00:53:29,480 --> 00:53:32,360 on their way to Antwerp. 868 00:53:32,360 --> 00:53:36,600 But then things begin changing right around Christmas. 869 00:53:36,600 --> 00:53:40,440 The crucial weakness in the German plan is fuel. 870 00:53:40,440 --> 00:53:42,480 This tank is a gas guzzler. 871 00:53:42,480 --> 00:53:46,880 Fully fuelled up, it could travel about 75 miles. 872 00:53:46,880 --> 00:53:52,640 But to refuel took 860 litres of fuel - that's 190 gallons. 873 00:53:52,640 --> 00:53:58,840 At the time, most German tanks were rationed to about 15 litres per day per tank. 874 00:53:59,800 --> 00:54:02,720 So if these tanks didn't get through to their objective, 875 00:54:02,720 --> 00:54:05,160 they would simply grind to a halt. 876 00:54:06,320 --> 00:54:10,840 That objective is the town of Spa on the Belgian border. 877 00:54:10,840 --> 00:54:13,720 Spa was where quantities of fuel were stored 878 00:54:13,720 --> 00:54:16,680 literally on the sides of the road. 879 00:54:16,680 --> 00:54:20,720 And one element of the German recon forces was dangerously close 880 00:54:20,720 --> 00:54:25,960 to finding this massive fuel depot, when a US Army captain with some 881 00:54:25,960 --> 00:54:29,520 Belgian soldiers make the decision to dig a trench in the middle 882 00:54:29,520 --> 00:54:32,680 of the road, pour fuel into it, and set it on fire. 883 00:54:32,680 --> 00:54:36,920 And this German recon element sees that, turns around and withdraws. 884 00:54:36,920 --> 00:54:40,040 They were painfully close to finding enough fuel 885 00:54:40,040 --> 00:54:42,760 that would have gotten them all the way to Antwerp. 886 00:54:42,760 --> 00:54:46,320 By now the Germans are running out of time, as well as fuel. 887 00:54:46,320 --> 00:54:50,080 As the skies clear above the bulge, Allied fighter bombers begin 888 00:54:50,080 --> 00:54:52,320 harrying the Panzer columns, 889 00:54:52,320 --> 00:54:55,560 and General Patton launches a counterattack. 890 00:54:57,360 --> 00:55:03,000 By the end of the campaign, Hitler has lost 98,024 men, 891 00:55:03,000 --> 00:55:07,600 around 700 armoured vehicles and 1,600 combat aircraft 892 00:55:07,600 --> 00:55:10,720 for absolutely no gain at all. 893 00:55:10,720 --> 00:55:14,240 It is a disaster for the Germans in more ways than one. 894 00:55:14,240 --> 00:55:17,120 There are German generals that don't want this attack 895 00:55:17,120 --> 00:55:20,520 because the troops could have been put to really good use 896 00:55:20,520 --> 00:55:23,680 trying to hold off the Soviets approaching Berlin. 897 00:55:23,680 --> 00:55:25,880 They're screaming for those troops but they don't get them 898 00:55:25,880 --> 00:55:29,400 because Hitler has this grand ambition of this sudden attack 899 00:55:29,400 --> 00:55:32,680 through the Ardennes that will recapture Antwerp. 900 00:55:32,680 --> 00:55:35,600 The only concrete thing that was achieved was to slow 901 00:55:35,600 --> 00:55:36,720 the Allies down. 902 00:55:38,000 --> 00:55:39,920 So the ultimate result of the Battle of the Bulge, 903 00:55:39,920 --> 00:55:44,480 well, you could say it was to expose enormous swathes of Germany 904 00:55:44,480 --> 00:55:46,480 to conquest by the Red Army. 905 00:55:47,800 --> 00:55:52,000 On 30th January 1945, the spearhead of the Soviet Red Army, 906 00:55:52,000 --> 00:55:54,960 commanded by Marshall Georgy Zhukov, 907 00:55:54,960 --> 00:56:00,240 reaches the River Oder, just 44 miles from Berlin. 908 00:56:00,240 --> 00:56:02,680 It is the culmination of a victorious charge 909 00:56:02,680 --> 00:56:04,200 into German territory. 910 00:56:04,200 --> 00:56:07,120 Yet still the Germans fight on. 911 00:56:07,120 --> 00:56:10,960 From 1943 onwards, German propaganda 912 00:56:10,960 --> 00:56:13,160 hammered out the same themes all the time - 913 00:56:13,160 --> 00:56:15,640 "The Allies will take revenge, the Jews will take revenge." 914 00:56:15,640 --> 00:56:17,280 "The Bolshevik menace is coming, 915 00:56:17,280 --> 00:56:19,240 "and this will be the end of Germany." 916 00:56:19,240 --> 00:56:21,720 Now, some Germans did believe that of course, and they 917 00:56:21,720 --> 00:56:23,480 carried on fighting to the end. 918 00:56:23,480 --> 00:56:25,720 Where the Red Army was concerned, 919 00:56:25,720 --> 00:56:29,240 the propaganda wasn't entirely exaggerating. 920 00:56:29,240 --> 00:56:32,680 The Soviets inflicted enormous violence against 921 00:56:32,680 --> 00:56:34,360 the German population. 922 00:56:34,360 --> 00:56:36,640 The evidence is pretty overwhelming. 923 00:56:36,640 --> 00:56:39,320 It's pure and simply revenge. 924 00:56:39,320 --> 00:56:43,760 The Germans had treated the Russians with such brutality. 925 00:56:43,760 --> 00:56:46,880 But there's also a sense that the Russians are arriving 926 00:56:46,880 --> 00:56:50,920 in Germany and they're seeing a standard of living 927 00:56:50,920 --> 00:56:53,240 that they don't recognise. 928 00:56:53,240 --> 00:56:58,120 The average German peasant lives so much better than his Russian 929 00:56:58,120 --> 00:57:01,120 equivalent, and they're staggered by this - 930 00:57:01,120 --> 00:57:05,000 "Why are they even invading us "when they have all this already?" 931 00:57:05,000 --> 00:57:07,520 So that fuels a kind of anger 932 00:57:07,520 --> 00:57:10,760 that snowballs into a brutal mode of behaviour. 933 00:57:12,160 --> 00:57:15,200 Those who paid most were women. 934 00:57:15,200 --> 00:57:18,480 Millions of German women were raped by the waves of Russians 935 00:57:18,480 --> 00:57:19,640 that were coming through. 936 00:57:19,640 --> 00:57:23,080 Many killed themselves rather than falling into the hands 937 00:57:23,080 --> 00:57:27,760 of the Russians or having been mistreated by the Russians. 938 00:57:27,760 --> 00:57:29,760 It was a very real revenge. 939 00:57:31,520 --> 00:57:33,720 Across all fronts, 940 00:57:33,720 --> 00:57:35,760 at least 400,000 German soldiers 941 00:57:35,760 --> 00:57:38,560 died in the last five months of the war. 942 00:57:38,560 --> 00:57:43,040 But some Nazis had darker reasons to fight on than their compatriots. 943 00:57:43,040 --> 00:57:46,560 Some had terrible secrets to hide. 944 00:57:46,560 --> 00:57:48,960 On 27th January 1945, 945 00:57:48,960 --> 00:57:55,320 a unit of the Red Army's 107th Rifle Division came upon a camp 946 00:57:55,320 --> 00:57:59,000 hidden in a forest about 30 miles west of Krakow. 947 00:58:01,200 --> 00:58:02,840 This camp was abandoned... 948 00:58:05,440 --> 00:58:08,080 ..some of the buildings were destroyed, 949 00:58:08,080 --> 00:58:14,520 but 8,000 emaciated people remained in it, 950 00:58:14,520 --> 00:58:18,240 who are able to tell this unit what they had stumbled upon. 951 00:58:19,760 --> 00:58:21,160 Auschwitz. 952 00:58:23,920 --> 00:58:27,720 Auschwitz-Birkenau has become a symbol of the terrible crimes 953 00:58:27,720 --> 00:58:31,080 perpetrated by the Nazis in the Holocaust, 954 00:58:31,080 --> 00:58:33,800 and a byword for horror. 955 00:58:33,800 --> 00:58:38,040 But it wasn't the only camp uncovered by the Russian advance. 956 00:58:38,040 --> 00:58:42,480 The Soviets were the first to encounter death camps, 957 00:58:42,480 --> 00:58:46,120 seeing Majdanek already in the summer of '44. 958 00:58:46,120 --> 00:58:51,720 And this was the first, really, and only occasion on which a Nazi 959 00:58:51,720 --> 00:58:56,120 crematorium unit, including the gas chambers, had been discovered 960 00:58:56,120 --> 00:58:58,160 pretty much functioning. 961 00:58:58,160 --> 00:59:02,240 The Nazis had been pushed back so fast they simply hadn't had time 962 00:59:02,240 --> 00:59:05,440 to destroy the evidence before they fled. 963 00:59:05,440 --> 00:59:09,680 At Auschwitz they tried to cover their tracks. 964 00:59:09,680 --> 00:59:13,440 They'd taken people off on these horrific marches through the snowy 965 00:59:13,440 --> 00:59:16,920 countryside going westwards, and they'd just left the sick 966 00:59:16,920 --> 00:59:19,680 and the dying who weren't fit to walk. 967 00:59:19,680 --> 00:59:24,360 Of the 714,000 concentration camp prisoners held by the Reich 968 00:59:24,360 --> 00:59:27,040 in January 1945, 969 00:59:27,040 --> 00:59:29,760 almost half were dead by the end of May... 970 00:59:31,080 --> 00:59:35,040 ..as the Nazis indulged in one last great orgy of killing. 971 00:59:36,440 --> 00:59:39,280 When the Soviets discovered Auschwitz, it shocked them 972 00:59:39,280 --> 00:59:42,280 in the scale and in the industrial design 973 00:59:42,280 --> 00:59:43,880 of this kind of killing. 974 00:59:43,880 --> 00:59:46,320 The British and Americans were very, very sceptical. 975 00:59:46,320 --> 00:59:48,640 They thought that the Soviets were lying about this. 976 00:59:48,640 --> 00:59:51,400 And so when the British and Americans discovered 977 00:59:51,400 --> 00:59:55,120 Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Buchenwald and so forth, 978 00:59:55,120 --> 00:59:56,560 one of the sentiments expressed was, 979 00:59:56,560 --> 01:00:00,040 "It turns out the Russians were telling the truth about all of this." 980 01:00:00,040 --> 01:00:02,160 Now the reckoning was coming. 981 01:00:05,440 --> 01:00:08,480 On Monday 16th April 1945, 982 01:00:08,480 --> 01:00:12,400 the massed batteries of Marshal Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front 983 01:00:12,400 --> 01:00:18,040 unleashed 1,236,000 shells against the dug-in positions 984 01:00:18,040 --> 01:00:21,720 of the German 9th Army defending Berlin. 985 01:00:21,720 --> 01:00:25,840 It took 2,450 freight cars 986 01:00:25,840 --> 01:00:29,240 to carry the shells that were expended 987 01:00:29,240 --> 01:00:33,400 in the first day - a single day - of attacking Berlin. 988 01:00:35,360 --> 01:00:40,080 The Soviets followed this up with an assault by 2.5 million troops, 989 01:00:40,080 --> 01:00:44,840 6,250 tanks, 41,000 artillery, 990 01:00:44,840 --> 01:00:48,000 and 7,500 aircraft 991 01:00:48,000 --> 01:00:50,920 on two main fronts. 992 01:00:50,920 --> 01:00:55,280 Against them were ranged around 760,000 Germans, 993 01:00:55,280 --> 01:00:59,440 with 1,500 armoured vehicles and 9,000 artillery. 994 01:01:01,920 --> 01:01:05,240 In actual fact, only about 85,000 soldiers 995 01:01:05,240 --> 01:01:07,440 are protecting the city itself. 996 01:01:07,440 --> 01:01:11,320 Half of them are old men, young boys. 997 01:01:11,320 --> 01:01:14,280 Half of them are die-hard Nazis, 998 01:01:14,280 --> 01:01:17,040 some of them foreign SS troops. 999 01:01:17,040 --> 01:01:19,920 The rest of the German Army was actually trying to fall back 1000 01:01:19,920 --> 01:01:24,720 from Berlin and head west to surrender to the Western Allies. 1001 01:01:24,720 --> 01:01:29,520 But it's no wonder, then, that Zhukov's assault only takes a week 1002 01:01:29,520 --> 01:01:32,720 until he's parked right outside the Reichstag, 1003 01:01:32,720 --> 01:01:35,600 right in the heart of Berlin. 1004 01:01:35,600 --> 01:01:38,520 On 30th April 1945, 1005 01:01:38,520 --> 01:01:42,360 two days after Benito Mussolini had been shot and hung in Italy, 1006 01:01:42,360 --> 01:01:45,560 Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide 1007 01:01:45,560 --> 01:01:47,360 in the Fuhrerbunker. 1008 01:01:48,920 --> 01:01:52,440 That same day, Zhukov's forces stormed the Reichstag, 1009 01:01:52,440 --> 01:01:55,920 just 400 yards from Hitler's hiding place, 1010 01:01:55,920 --> 01:01:58,800 and raised the Soviet flag over it. 1011 01:01:58,800 --> 01:02:02,240 The German Army officially surrendered nine days later. 1012 01:02:04,440 --> 01:02:11,280 The battle for Berlin cost the Soviets 352,425 casualties, 1013 01:02:11,280 --> 01:02:14,200 of which 78,291 were killed. 1014 01:02:15,800 --> 01:02:19,000 But that was a drop in the ocean compared to their total losses 1015 01:02:19,000 --> 01:02:21,320 throughout the Second World War. 1016 01:02:23,080 --> 01:02:27,280 The Soviet Union mobilised about 34.5 million people 1017 01:02:27,280 --> 01:02:29,240 in World War II - 1018 01:02:29,240 --> 01:02:33,680 almost 11.5 million soldiers died. 1019 01:02:35,440 --> 01:02:40,280 By comparison, the Germans lost half that many soldiers. 1020 01:02:40,280 --> 01:02:44,080 The British and the Americans combined lost less than a tenth 1021 01:02:44,080 --> 01:02:47,240 of what the Soviets had to endure. 1022 01:02:47,240 --> 01:02:48,720 But it's really when you add 1023 01:02:48,720 --> 01:02:50,680 the civilian casualties into the mix 1024 01:02:50,680 --> 01:02:52,120 that the true cost of the war 1025 01:02:52,120 --> 01:02:53,600 to the Russians strikes home. 1026 01:02:53,600 --> 01:02:56,960 It's virtually impossible to put a figure on the number of civilians 1027 01:02:56,960 --> 01:03:00,760 who were starved or shot or simply worked to death by the Nazis 1028 01:03:00,760 --> 01:03:02,840 after Operation Barbarossa, 1029 01:03:02,840 --> 01:03:08,600 but the generally accepted estimate is around 16 million, 1030 01:03:08,600 --> 01:03:13,320 which means that something like 27 million Russians died 1031 01:03:13,320 --> 01:03:16,400 in what Stalin dubbed the Great Patriotic War. 1032 01:03:18,400 --> 01:03:20,840 When you compare that with the 50 to 60 million people 1033 01:03:20,840 --> 01:03:24,200 who are estimated to have died overall during the war, you realise 1034 01:03:24,200 --> 01:03:30,640 that the Russians alone lost half the total number of people who died 1035 01:03:30,640 --> 01:03:32,960 during the Second World War. 1036 01:03:32,960 --> 01:03:36,600 But for the Russians, as well as for the Americans, Chinese 1037 01:03:36,600 --> 01:03:40,920 and Japanese, the war isn't over yet. 1038 01:03:40,920 --> 01:03:42,960 The war in Europe may be won, 1039 01:03:42,960 --> 01:03:46,640 but the fight back in the Pacific has only just begun. 1040 01:03:49,680 --> 01:03:54,960 In April 1944, the Imperial Japanese Army announced the largest operation 1041 01:03:54,960 --> 01:03:58,480 it will ever undertake during the Second World War. 1042 01:03:58,480 --> 01:04:00,920 But it's not targeted at the Americans, 1043 01:04:00,920 --> 01:04:02,640 it's targeted at China. 1044 01:04:02,640 --> 01:04:06,240 We tend to forget that the Second World War actually started in China 1045 01:04:06,240 --> 01:04:09,560 in 1937 and it's continued unabated ever since. 1046 01:04:11,000 --> 01:04:14,880 510,000 troops on the Chinese mainland launch 1047 01:04:14,880 --> 01:04:16,800 Operation Ichi-Go - 1048 01:04:16,800 --> 01:04:21,240 an ambitious thrust into the heart of Chinese nationalist territory. 1049 01:04:21,240 --> 01:04:25,760 Operation Ichi-Go was a Japanese plan to strike at American airfields 1050 01:04:25,760 --> 01:04:28,120 that were beginning to bomb the Japanese home islands. 1051 01:04:28,120 --> 01:04:32,040 The Japanese push forward, finally conquering large swathes of 1052 01:04:32,040 --> 01:04:34,920 central China that simply hadn't fallen to the Japanese 1053 01:04:34,920 --> 01:04:38,120 in the previous six or seven years. 1054 01:04:38,120 --> 01:04:41,080 As the Kuomintang of Chiang Kai-shek collapses, 1055 01:04:41,080 --> 01:04:45,000 the Japanese victory looks overwhelming. 1056 01:04:45,000 --> 01:04:48,200 The success of Ichi-Go ends up being a bit of a mirage 1057 01:04:48,200 --> 01:04:52,920 because this inadvertently sets the stage for bombing operations 1058 01:04:52,920 --> 01:04:55,120 against the Japanese home islands. 1059 01:04:55,120 --> 01:04:57,560 American bombers are now within striking range 1060 01:04:57,560 --> 01:04:59,360 of the Japanese mainland, 1061 01:04:59,360 --> 01:05:01,360 and they exploit this with a vengeance. 1062 01:05:01,360 --> 01:05:04,080 The US XXI Bomber Command is led by a man called 1063 01:05:04,080 --> 01:05:05,840 General Curtis LeMay. 1064 01:05:05,840 --> 01:05:10,480 Now, he draws up this big list of Japanese urban and industrial 1065 01:05:10,480 --> 01:05:14,320 targets, and he starts doing so in February 1945. 1066 01:05:14,320 --> 01:05:17,760 A series of punishing aerial attacks start off 1067 01:05:17,760 --> 01:05:22,080 small and then begin getting larger and larger and larger. 1068 01:05:22,080 --> 01:05:28,600 In that first month, his planes conduct 2,700 sorties against Tokyo 1069 01:05:28,600 --> 01:05:30,680 and Yokohama alone. 1070 01:05:30,680 --> 01:05:37,080 The infamous great raid on Tokyo actually killed 83,000 people, 1071 01:05:37,080 --> 01:05:40,960 and renders a further 1.5 million people homeless. 1072 01:05:40,960 --> 01:05:45,000 This campaign is going to flatten 40% of buildings in 1073 01:05:45,000 --> 01:05:50,960 66 Japanese cities and displace eight million people. 1074 01:05:50,960 --> 01:05:54,760 As unfortunate as that is, that is exactly the type of success 1075 01:05:54,760 --> 01:05:57,040 that LeMay is looking for. 1076 01:05:57,040 --> 01:06:00,720 Yet despite the pounding their citizens are taking, the die-hard 1077 01:06:00,720 --> 01:06:03,200 militarists in control of the Japanese government 1078 01:06:03,200 --> 01:06:05,840 are determined to fight on. 1079 01:06:05,840 --> 01:06:08,560 Having won their empire, they don't want to give it up. 1080 01:06:08,560 --> 01:06:11,000 There's a cold, hard calculus associated with what compels 1081 01:06:11,000 --> 01:06:12,960 the Japanese to continue fighting on 1082 01:06:12,960 --> 01:06:14,720 in the face of these bombing raids. 1083 01:06:14,720 --> 01:06:17,600 And that is the belief that if they demonstrate 1084 01:06:17,600 --> 01:06:20,560 to the United States that a potential invasion 1085 01:06:20,560 --> 01:06:22,440 is going to be so costly, 1086 01:06:22,440 --> 01:06:26,480 the United States will have to back down from the idea 1087 01:06:26,480 --> 01:06:28,440 of unconditional surrender. 1088 01:06:31,640 --> 01:06:35,720 Faced with the obdurate refusal of Japan to admit that it's beaten, 1089 01:06:35,720 --> 01:06:41,320 the American high command adopts the strategy known as island hopping. 1090 01:06:41,320 --> 01:06:46,320 All that matters is grabbing every Japanese-held island en route 1091 01:06:46,320 --> 01:06:48,840 to the Japanese mainland. 1092 01:06:48,840 --> 01:06:53,120 And one island that has to be taken is the ash-covered volcanic atoll 1093 01:06:53,120 --> 01:06:54,120 of Iwo Jima. 1094 01:06:55,680 --> 01:06:58,680 Iwo Jima is only about a third the size of Manhattan. 1095 01:06:58,680 --> 01:07:01,920 But it's an important island because it is exactly halfway 1096 01:07:01,920 --> 01:07:06,800 between the three air bases in the Mariana Islands and Tokyo. 1097 01:07:06,800 --> 01:07:11,000 This puts it right under the flight path of American bombers 1098 01:07:11,000 --> 01:07:12,960 on their way to bomb Japan. 1099 01:07:12,960 --> 01:07:16,200 It provides airfields from which Japanese aircraft 1100 01:07:16,200 --> 01:07:19,760 can intercept the B-29s 700 miles before Tokyo. 1101 01:07:19,760 --> 01:07:23,960 They've got to take out the airfields on Iwo Jima. 1102 01:07:23,960 --> 01:07:26,360 Easier said than done. 1103 01:07:26,360 --> 01:07:28,880 Iwo Jima was just one big beehive. 1104 01:07:28,880 --> 01:07:31,680 A warren of fighting positions. 1105 01:07:31,680 --> 01:07:33,760 They were so well dug in 1106 01:07:33,760 --> 01:07:38,760 that even a 79 day aerial and naval bombardment 1107 01:07:38,760 --> 01:07:41,920 hardly does any damage at all. 1108 01:07:41,920 --> 01:07:44,960 This island imposes unspeakable casualties. 1109 01:07:46,600 --> 01:07:50,160 American GIs have to winkle out the defenders with flame-throwers 1110 01:07:50,160 --> 01:07:53,080 and grenades at murderously close quarters. 1111 01:07:53,080 --> 01:07:55,600 The fighting on Iwo Jima was so hellish 1112 01:07:55,600 --> 01:07:59,400 that the Marines start to call every valley, every ridge, 1113 01:07:59,400 --> 01:08:03,280 names like Meat Grinder, Death Ridge, Blood Valley. 1114 01:08:03,280 --> 01:08:07,520 And then, once it looks like maybe the enemy has been suppressed, 1115 01:08:07,520 --> 01:08:11,840 the army sets up the fighter base, only then to have 300 Japanese 1116 01:08:11,840 --> 01:08:16,040 appear out of caves and conduct a banzai charge into an area 1117 01:08:16,040 --> 01:08:18,240 where ground crewmen are living. 1118 01:08:19,560 --> 01:08:23,960 The taking of Iwo Jima takes 45 days and cost the US Marines 1119 01:08:23,960 --> 01:08:28,240 6,821 dead and over 18,000 wounded. 1120 01:08:30,320 --> 01:08:34,040 This is the only time an American fighting force sustains 1121 01:08:34,040 --> 01:08:37,640 more casualties than there are defenders. 1122 01:08:37,640 --> 01:08:42,320 The Japanese lose over 21,000 people on that island. 1123 01:08:42,320 --> 01:08:46,200 The island hopping campaign is going to be nothing but a nasty 1124 01:08:46,200 --> 01:08:48,640 street fight from start to finish. 1125 01:08:50,000 --> 01:08:53,360 But Iwo Jima is merely the warm up to the desperate struggle 1126 01:08:53,360 --> 01:08:57,240 for the island of Okinawa, which begins five days later. 1127 01:08:58,560 --> 01:09:02,160 It's important to the Americans because it is basically a gateway 1128 01:09:02,160 --> 01:09:03,480 to the home islands. 1129 01:09:03,480 --> 01:09:06,320 If they can take Okinawa, they've therefore got a post 1130 01:09:06,320 --> 01:09:09,480 that's just 350 miles from the Japanese mainland. 1131 01:09:10,800 --> 01:09:13,840 On Sunday 1st April 1945, 1132 01:09:13,840 --> 01:09:19,520 more than 1,200 US vessels escort 60,000 Marines onto the 1133 01:09:19,520 --> 01:09:25,240 landing beaches as the prelude to an invasion of over 170,000 men. 1134 01:09:25,240 --> 01:09:28,080 They expected a rain of steel, 1135 01:09:28,080 --> 01:09:32,320 and instead the landing craft hit the beach, 1136 01:09:32,320 --> 01:09:35,680 Marines and soldiers exit them, and it's silence. 1137 01:09:37,440 --> 01:09:39,640 They're completely unopposed. 1138 01:09:39,640 --> 01:09:43,440 And it's not until they start going into the centre of the island 1139 01:09:43,440 --> 01:09:46,280 that they start to realise what's lying in store for them. 1140 01:09:48,480 --> 01:09:51,480 It takes the Marines 82 days to fight their way 1141 01:09:51,480 --> 01:09:55,720 across the ferociously defended ridges of Okinawa. 1142 01:09:55,720 --> 01:10:00,240 By the time that was over, some 7,000 Marines had been killed 1143 01:10:00,240 --> 01:10:04,200 and around 32,000 to 37,000 had been wounded. 1144 01:10:05,920 --> 01:10:08,120 Off the coast of Okinawa, 1145 01:10:08,120 --> 01:10:11,280 a macabre death ritual is being carried out 1146 01:10:11,280 --> 01:10:14,200 that will drive home just how costly the invasion of Japan 1147 01:10:14,200 --> 01:10:16,960 will be to the Americans. 1148 01:10:16,960 --> 01:10:20,080 One of the most unnerving experiences that American sailors 1149 01:10:20,080 --> 01:10:22,680 had to face was the suicidal missions 1150 01:10:22,680 --> 01:10:26,840 carried out by Japanese Kamikaze pilots against American shipping. 1151 01:10:29,120 --> 01:10:34,080 Kamikaze refers to the divine wind which sank the fleet 1152 01:10:34,080 --> 01:10:38,320 of the great Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan in the 13th century. 1153 01:10:38,320 --> 01:10:42,160 It's imbued with Japanese heroism and folklore and myth 1154 01:10:42,160 --> 01:10:44,360 given to these young pilots. 1155 01:10:44,360 --> 01:10:47,760 But behind all the ritual and self-sacrifice. 1156 01:10:47,760 --> 01:10:50,640 lay cold, hard, numerical reality. 1157 01:10:50,640 --> 01:10:53,280 The attrition rate for the Japanese pilots by this time 1158 01:10:53,280 --> 01:10:56,160 in the war was approaching 96%. 1159 01:10:56,160 --> 01:10:59,800 What they're left with are inexperienced pilots and a dramatic 1160 01:10:59,800 --> 01:11:02,800 fuel shortage, so they can't even train the pilots 1161 01:11:02,800 --> 01:11:04,320 that they have. 1162 01:11:04,320 --> 01:11:07,040 All a Kamikaze pilot has to do is get his plane 1163 01:11:07,040 --> 01:11:11,280 up in the air, point it at a conning tower and crash into it. 1164 01:11:11,280 --> 01:11:13,160 It was very effective. 1165 01:11:13,160 --> 01:11:16,720 During the three months of the Okinawa campaign, 1166 01:11:16,720 --> 01:11:20,160 1,465 Kamikaze attacks 1167 01:11:20,160 --> 01:11:24,600 sink 29 ships and damage 120 others, 1168 01:11:24,600 --> 01:11:29,080 killing and wounding 9,083 US naval personnel. 1169 01:11:29,080 --> 01:11:33,320 Add the losses offshore to the losses among the army 1170 01:11:33,320 --> 01:11:36,520 and marine divisions fighting onshore, 1171 01:11:36,520 --> 01:11:38,600 you have over 10,000 killed. 1172 01:11:38,600 --> 01:11:41,480 When you consider the killed, wounded and missing, 1173 01:11:41,480 --> 01:11:43,760 the number increases to 53,000. 1174 01:11:44,920 --> 01:11:48,800 Add 36,000 cases of combat fatigue, 1175 01:11:48,800 --> 01:11:51,200 the number pushes toward 90,000. 1176 01:11:51,200 --> 01:11:54,000 And all of that for an island that's 1177 01:11:54,000 --> 01:11:59,040 90 miles long from top to bottom, and eight miles wide. 1178 01:11:59,040 --> 01:12:02,560 So when the Joint Chiefs of Staff commission a kind of casualty 1179 01:12:02,560 --> 01:12:05,960 estimate for what it's going to cost them to invade 1180 01:12:05,960 --> 01:12:07,480 the Japanese homeland, 1181 01:12:07,480 --> 01:12:09,800 you only have to look at what the Japanese were doing 1182 01:12:09,800 --> 01:12:14,640 with their Unit 731. Now, that was developing biological weapons. 1183 01:12:14,640 --> 01:12:17,600 Japanese school students are being trained 1184 01:12:17,600 --> 01:12:19,320 for suicide tactics. 1185 01:12:19,320 --> 01:12:22,360 Then you add to that a large number of one-way suicide boats 1186 01:12:22,360 --> 01:12:24,160 were discovered. 1187 01:12:24,160 --> 01:12:26,400 The Joint Chiefs of Staff had to confront 1188 01:12:26,400 --> 01:12:29,600 one basic question and it was - "Is it worth it?" 1189 01:12:29,600 --> 01:12:32,200 There's got to be another way. 1190 01:12:34,600 --> 01:12:36,840 In August they find one. 1191 01:12:38,560 --> 01:12:40,920 On the morning of August 6th 1945, 1192 01:12:40,920 --> 01:12:46,200 people in Hiroshima look up to see three B-29s above the city. 1193 01:12:48,520 --> 01:12:52,280 The inhabitants of Hiroshima actually thought they were immune 1194 01:12:52,280 --> 01:12:56,680 from bombing because Hiroshima had been spared the onslaught 1195 01:12:56,680 --> 01:12:59,240 of the B-29 bombing campaign. 1196 01:13:02,240 --> 01:13:05,240 The awful truth is that General Curtis LeMay was ordered to set 1197 01:13:05,240 --> 01:13:08,800 aside three Japanese cities for special treatment. 1198 01:13:08,800 --> 01:13:11,040 But now the time has come for the people 1199 01:13:11,040 --> 01:13:12,960 of Hiroshima to experience bombing. 1200 01:13:25,040 --> 01:13:29,280 The one single atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima by the Enola Gay 1201 01:13:29,280 --> 01:13:32,040 flattens half the city and immediately incinerates 1202 01:13:32,040 --> 01:13:33,760 more than 40,000 people. 1203 01:13:37,200 --> 01:13:40,400 And more civilians will die in the months that follow. 1204 01:13:42,640 --> 01:13:44,960 People begin to die of this new thing - 1205 01:13:44,960 --> 01:13:47,200 radiation poisoning. 1206 01:13:47,200 --> 01:13:51,680 And as time goes by, it elevates the total loss of life at Hiroshima 1207 01:13:51,680 --> 01:13:55,560 and brings that number all the way up to about 140,000. 1208 01:13:58,080 --> 01:14:00,960 But the Japanese fail to surrender. 1209 01:14:00,960 --> 01:14:06,000 So three days later, the US drops Fat Man on Nagasaki, 1210 01:14:06,000 --> 01:14:10,480 killing almost 30,000 instantly and condemning more than 73,000 1211 01:14:10,480 --> 01:14:12,600 to a lingering death. 1212 01:14:20,200 --> 01:14:25,160 In the early hours of the same day, almost two million Soviet troops 1213 01:14:25,160 --> 01:14:28,560 supported by 5,500 tanks, 1214 01:14:28,560 --> 01:14:32,720 surge into Manchuria and overwhelm the Japanese garrison there. 1215 01:14:35,800 --> 01:14:40,880 Emperor Hirohito insisted then that his civilian representatives 1216 01:14:40,880 --> 01:14:43,280 open up communications with the government 1217 01:14:43,280 --> 01:14:47,200 of the United States toward a negotiated settlement. 1218 01:14:47,200 --> 01:14:50,640 Hirohito's inclinations when he comes to the throne in the 1920s 1219 01:14:50,640 --> 01:14:53,240 of course is to be a pacifist, an internationalist 1220 01:14:53,240 --> 01:14:56,520 and a democrat and so on, and he finds himself hostage increasingly 1221 01:14:56,520 --> 01:14:58,320 to a militarised society 1222 01:14:58,320 --> 01:15:01,640 which is engaging in violent imperial conquests. 1223 01:15:01,640 --> 01:15:04,040 And he never really manages to square that circle 1224 01:15:04,040 --> 01:15:06,280 until finally at the very end of the war 1225 01:15:06,280 --> 01:15:09,680 with the Russian invasion, starvation, the atomic bomb, 1226 01:15:09,680 --> 01:15:12,040 puts him in a position where he can say to the military, 1227 01:15:12,040 --> 01:15:13,920 "Well, you were going along and I was right. 1228 01:15:13,920 --> 01:15:15,240 "It's time to end the war." 1229 01:15:15,240 --> 01:15:19,480 Now he's going to make a radio broadcast on August 14th 1230 01:15:19,480 --> 01:15:23,320 that's going to announce Japan's surrender. 1231 01:15:23,320 --> 01:15:28,080 Even now the die-hard militarists refuse to accept defeat. 1232 01:15:28,080 --> 01:15:32,320 He's still got this hardcore clique of militaristic officers 1233 01:15:32,320 --> 01:15:34,800 who try to get into the Imperial Palace, 1234 01:15:34,800 --> 01:15:38,160 locate the recording that's going to announce the surrender 1235 01:15:38,160 --> 01:15:39,760 and destroy it. 1236 01:15:39,760 --> 01:15:43,160 Their belief is that the emperor's wisdom has been tarnished 1237 01:15:43,160 --> 01:15:46,960 by "defeatists" - people who did not believe that victory 1238 01:15:46,960 --> 01:15:50,040 was still possible because to them, it still was. 1239 01:15:50,040 --> 01:15:51,920 The emperor and his Chamberlain 1240 01:15:51,920 --> 01:15:54,160 actually have to hide from these rebels. 1241 01:15:54,160 --> 01:15:58,400 There was even gunplay on the grounds of the Imperial Palace 1242 01:15:58,400 --> 01:16:01,320 as the mutineers sought to find the discs 1243 01:16:01,320 --> 01:16:05,720 upon which the imperial rescript was recorded. 1244 01:16:05,720 --> 01:16:08,360 And it's not until troops loyal to the Emperor 1245 01:16:08,360 --> 01:16:10,360 actually manages to fight off the rebels 1246 01:16:10,360 --> 01:16:12,360 and the rebels end up committing suicide 1247 01:16:12,360 --> 01:16:15,120 that actually the broadcast is finally safe. 1248 01:16:16,360 --> 01:16:19,280 Whether the Emperor could have prevailed over these fanatical 1249 01:16:19,280 --> 01:16:22,640 hawks without the impetus of the atom bomb, 1250 01:16:22,640 --> 01:16:25,880 is something historians still argue over today. 1251 01:16:25,880 --> 01:16:30,520 If I'd been in the shoes of the American leadership in 1945, 1252 01:16:30,520 --> 01:16:32,080 would I have dropped the atom bombs? 1253 01:16:32,080 --> 01:16:35,320 And I'm afraid my answer to that is probably yes. 1254 01:16:35,320 --> 01:16:37,320 The Japanese were still fighting. 1255 01:16:37,320 --> 01:16:40,000 The idea that they were ready to surrender - 1256 01:16:40,000 --> 01:16:41,960 I don't buy that at all. 1257 01:16:41,960 --> 01:16:44,640 This hardcore clique in the Japanese high command 1258 01:16:44,640 --> 01:16:47,120 still want to fight on. 1259 01:16:47,120 --> 01:16:50,560 It was Nagasaki that really is what got through to the Emperor 1260 01:16:50,560 --> 01:16:51,920 and made him intervene. 1261 01:16:51,920 --> 01:16:53,600 From the American perspective, 1262 01:16:53,600 --> 01:16:56,120 the atomic bomb was dropped because they really did think 1263 01:16:56,120 --> 01:16:58,000 they might bring the war to an end quickly 1264 01:16:58,000 --> 01:17:00,040 and save lots of American lives. 1265 01:17:00,040 --> 01:17:02,360 But I think they were also impelled very much 1266 01:17:02,360 --> 01:17:04,400 by a kind of technological imperative - 1267 01:17:04,400 --> 01:17:06,880 that they were desperate to see if it worked. 1268 01:17:06,880 --> 01:17:12,360 Very few people in 1945 understood the unspeakable, 1269 01:17:12,360 --> 01:17:15,080 shocking horror of atomic weapons. 1270 01:17:15,080 --> 01:17:17,840 They hadn't been demonstrated. 1271 01:17:17,840 --> 01:17:21,160 And for Roosevelt's successor, President Truman, 1272 01:17:21,160 --> 01:17:25,560 the atom bomb must have seemed like a perfect solution. 1273 01:17:25,560 --> 01:17:29,480 The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. 1274 01:17:29,480 --> 01:17:32,800 They have been repaid many fold. 1275 01:17:32,800 --> 01:17:36,080 Do remember the firebombing by conventional bombs 1276 01:17:36,080 --> 01:17:40,800 that killed far more Japanese than did Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 1277 01:17:40,800 --> 01:17:44,400 And I'm afraid it is true of all wars that people will do things 1278 01:17:44,400 --> 01:17:47,360 when they are sick of the killing and sick of the dying 1279 01:17:47,360 --> 01:17:51,600 and they want it to be over, and the Japanese refused to quit. 1280 01:17:51,600 --> 01:17:54,960 To me, it doesn't look like an issue of atomic weapons 1281 01:17:54,960 --> 01:17:57,240 versus conventional weapons. 1282 01:17:57,240 --> 01:18:00,360 It looks to me like an issue of whether or not it's right to bomb 1283 01:18:00,360 --> 01:18:02,200 civilians at all. 1284 01:18:02,200 --> 01:18:05,320 At the start of September 1945, 1285 01:18:05,320 --> 01:18:08,560 General Douglas MacArthur accepts the Japanese surrender on board 1286 01:18:08,560 --> 01:18:12,560 the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. 1287 01:18:12,560 --> 01:18:16,800 The Second World War is officially over. 1288 01:18:16,800 --> 01:18:19,160 Even before the dust begins to settle, 1289 01:18:19,160 --> 01:18:23,120 the Western Allies are faced with two problems to solve. 1290 01:18:23,120 --> 01:18:26,360 One is how they're going to deal with the Russians. 1291 01:18:26,360 --> 01:18:29,160 The other is what to do about the Nazis. 1292 01:18:31,890 --> 01:18:34,290 In July 1945, 1293 01:18:34,290 --> 01:18:36,850 two months before the Japanese surrender, 1294 01:18:36,850 --> 01:18:39,770 the Allied leaders Churchill, Truman and Stalin 1295 01:18:39,770 --> 01:18:41,770 meet at Potsdam, Germany, 1296 01:18:41,770 --> 01:18:44,690 to hammer out the post-war settlement of Europe. 1297 01:18:46,210 --> 01:18:49,170 Germany is divided into four occupation zones. 1298 01:18:51,650 --> 01:18:54,690 In November, the Allies agreed to try the Nazis 1299 01:18:54,690 --> 01:18:57,050 for crimes against humanity 1300 01:18:57,050 --> 01:19:00,650 at a military tribunal in Nuremberg. 1301 01:19:00,650 --> 01:19:04,370 But the number they can put on trial is severely limited. 1302 01:19:04,370 --> 01:19:08,130 The International Military Tribunal only puts in the dock the number 1303 01:19:08,130 --> 01:19:09,490 that can sit on the bench 1304 01:19:09,490 --> 01:19:13,170 and they figured out that there was room for 24. 1305 01:19:13,170 --> 01:19:15,010 Even before the trials begin, 1306 01:19:15,010 --> 01:19:17,530 one of the 24 was deemed mentally unfit 1307 01:19:17,530 --> 01:19:19,530 and another committed suicide. 1308 01:19:19,530 --> 01:19:22,890 The classic defence trotted out by many of the senior Nazis 1309 01:19:22,890 --> 01:19:26,810 at Nuremberg was one of only following orders. 1310 01:19:26,810 --> 01:19:30,050 But Allied intelligence had proof that the atrocities were widely 1311 01:19:30,050 --> 01:19:33,610 known in Nazi military circles. 1312 01:19:33,610 --> 01:19:36,490 Trent Park is a stately home in north London 1313 01:19:36,490 --> 01:19:38,690 and during the Second World War, 1314 01:19:38,690 --> 01:19:42,370 the British intelligence held Hitler's captured generals 1315 01:19:42,370 --> 01:19:44,890 and they lived a life of relative luxury. 1316 01:19:44,890 --> 01:19:47,490 But of course what they didn't realise was that everything 1317 01:19:47,490 --> 01:19:49,410 in the house was bugged. 1318 01:19:49,410 --> 01:19:53,930 From the transcripts, we can see that the Wehrmacht, the German army, 1319 01:19:53,930 --> 01:19:56,290 was complicit in war crimes, 1320 01:19:56,290 --> 01:20:00,890 that it was involved in the killing machine and in the Holocaust. 1321 01:20:00,890 --> 01:20:03,210 Other criminals of course, such as Goering, 1322 01:20:03,210 --> 01:20:06,090 were utterly unapologetic about what they had done. 1323 01:20:06,090 --> 01:20:07,970 Then you had people like Albert Speer 1324 01:20:07,970 --> 01:20:11,690 who decided the best way to save his life was to apologise for it. 1325 01:20:11,690 --> 01:20:14,530 He distanced himself very much from Hitler. 1326 01:20:15,730 --> 01:20:20,730 Of the 22 Nazis who stood trial at Nuremberg, three were acquitted, 1327 01:20:20,730 --> 01:20:25,570 seven were imprisoned and the other 12 were sentenced to death. 1328 01:20:25,570 --> 01:20:29,130 Though Nuremberg was not the only trial of Nazi perpetrators, 1329 01:20:29,130 --> 01:20:33,090 only a handful actually paid for their crimes. 1330 01:20:33,090 --> 01:20:37,450 Historians reckon that between 200,000 and 800,000 people 1331 01:20:37,450 --> 01:20:39,850 were involved in murdering Jews. 1332 01:20:39,850 --> 01:20:44,050 Of those, 99% of people who actually killed Jews were never 1333 01:20:44,050 --> 01:20:45,570 brought to court. 1334 01:20:45,570 --> 01:20:50,530 In West Germany, somewhere between 106,000 and 140,000 people 1335 01:20:50,530 --> 01:20:53,010 were investigated 1336 01:20:53,010 --> 01:20:56,930 and only 164 people in West Germany 1337 01:20:56,930 --> 01:20:59,290 were actually found guilty of murder. 1338 01:21:00,490 --> 01:21:04,170 164 people for six million plus murders. 1339 01:21:04,170 --> 01:21:07,050 That is a quite extraordinary figure. 1340 01:21:07,050 --> 01:21:09,570 If you look at overall numbers, 1341 01:21:09,570 --> 01:21:15,650 including the trials carried out by the East Germans and the Austrians, 1342 01:21:15,650 --> 01:21:21,290 again the outcome is absolutely pathetic in terms of sheer numbers. 1343 01:21:21,290 --> 01:21:24,250 The reason for such leniency was political. 1344 01:21:24,250 --> 01:21:29,290 The biggest reason was the switch from the war to the Cold War. 1345 01:21:29,290 --> 01:21:34,170 So at that point, chasing Communists became a higher priority. 1346 01:21:34,170 --> 01:21:36,730 Because as the Second World War came to an end, 1347 01:21:36,730 --> 01:21:38,450 the biggest danger to democracy 1348 01:21:38,450 --> 01:21:43,250 appeared to be the Western powers' erstwhile ally, Joseph Stalin. 1349 01:21:43,250 --> 01:21:46,530 Stalin's big winner from the Second World War. 1350 01:21:46,530 --> 01:21:52,450 He's got a lot more territory in 1945 than he ever did in 1939. 1351 01:21:52,450 --> 01:21:55,090 One of the tragic dimensions of World War II 1352 01:21:55,090 --> 01:21:58,850 is the fact that it seems to vindicate Stalin personally. 1353 01:21:58,850 --> 01:22:01,250 Yes, it's cost him millions of lives 1354 01:22:01,250 --> 01:22:04,570 but he's now also got a kind of narrative 1355 01:22:04,570 --> 01:22:06,970 attached to his personality. 1356 01:22:06,970 --> 01:22:11,650 He presents it afterwards as his own personal victory. 1357 01:22:11,650 --> 01:22:15,610 But the Soviet command economy was not geared to sustain the empire 1358 01:22:15,610 --> 01:22:17,850 that Stalin and his successors created 1359 01:22:17,850 --> 01:22:21,010 off the back of the Second World War. 1360 01:22:21,010 --> 01:22:23,850 You could say the Soviet bloc became, on the face of it, 1361 01:22:23,850 --> 01:22:28,490 very strong, but actually it got far too big, far too unwieldy. 1362 01:22:28,490 --> 01:22:30,730 And within really quite a short time, 1363 01:22:30,730 --> 01:22:33,770 the whole thing collapsed again. 1364 01:22:33,770 --> 01:22:37,730 As the Cold War heated up, the Soviets found it increasingly 1365 01:22:37,730 --> 01:22:42,050 expensive to compete with the other great winner of World War II. 1366 01:22:42,050 --> 01:22:45,930 The United States was overwhelmingly the biggest winner. 1367 01:22:45,930 --> 01:22:48,530 It came out of the war incomparably richer 1368 01:22:48,530 --> 01:22:52,130 as well as more powerful than it had been at the outset. 1369 01:22:52,130 --> 01:22:55,410 The United States then navigates into the post-war time period 1370 01:22:55,410 --> 01:22:59,490 as really a beacon of economic strength and security. 1371 01:22:59,490 --> 01:23:02,010 Whereas almost every other belligerent 1372 01:23:02,010 --> 01:23:06,530 was both physically ruined and also financially bankrupt. 1373 01:23:07,770 --> 01:23:11,330 The Second World War cost the nations of Europe an estimated 1374 01:23:11,330 --> 01:23:14,970 958 billion US dollars 1375 01:23:14,970 --> 01:23:19,210 and brought France, Britain and Germany to their knees. 1376 01:23:19,210 --> 01:23:23,570 As the iron curtain of communism began to sweep over Eastern Europe, 1377 01:23:23,570 --> 01:23:27,570 General Marshall, ex-US Chief of Staff from World War II, 1378 01:23:27,570 --> 01:23:30,690 realised that something had to be done. 1379 01:23:30,690 --> 01:23:33,410 It wasn't enough for America to be strong, 1380 01:23:33,410 --> 01:23:35,170 Europe had to be stable as well. 1381 01:23:35,170 --> 01:23:37,330 And the best way for Europe to be stable 1382 01:23:37,330 --> 01:23:39,530 was for its economies to thrive. 1383 01:23:39,530 --> 01:23:42,450 Marshall advocates a generous programme 1384 01:23:42,450 --> 01:23:45,050 that shares economic wealth with the countries 1385 01:23:45,050 --> 01:23:47,290 that were affected by the Second World War - 1386 01:23:47,290 --> 01:23:50,330 to include the former Nazi Germany. 1387 01:23:50,330 --> 01:23:54,570 He was smart enough to recognise that restricting Germany's economy 1388 01:23:54,570 --> 01:23:57,410 would probably mean that we would repeat the cycle 1389 01:23:57,410 --> 01:24:00,490 that was created by the Versailles Treaty 1390 01:24:00,490 --> 01:24:03,250 at the end of the First World War. 1391 01:24:03,250 --> 01:24:07,490 Under the Marshall Plan, 16 European nations received a total 1392 01:24:07,490 --> 01:24:10,450 of 13 billion US dollars in financial aid 1393 01:24:10,450 --> 01:24:13,130 between 1948 and 1951. 1394 01:24:14,530 --> 01:24:18,410 West Germany received $1.4 billion. 1395 01:24:18,410 --> 01:24:21,250 France almost 2.3 billion. 1396 01:24:21,250 --> 01:24:26,210 But by far the biggest recipient of US aid was Great Britain. 1397 01:24:26,210 --> 01:24:29,530 There's also a vital strategic reason for the Marshall Plan - 1398 01:24:29,530 --> 01:24:31,970 to make sure that Europe is prosperous enough 1399 01:24:31,970 --> 01:24:35,330 in order to be able to arm herself as a bulwark against any form 1400 01:24:35,330 --> 01:24:37,810 of encroaching Soviet Union. 1401 01:24:37,810 --> 01:24:42,730 But Marshall aid wasn't the only legacy of the Second World War. 1402 01:24:42,730 --> 01:24:45,250 Some admirable institutions emerged, 1403 01:24:45,250 --> 01:24:47,890 certainly the United Nations, later NATO, 1404 01:24:47,890 --> 01:24:51,330 and of course the EU because of the determination to bind 1405 01:24:51,330 --> 01:24:53,690 together France and Germany in such a fashion 1406 01:24:53,690 --> 01:24:56,650 that they would never think of going to war again. 1407 01:24:56,650 --> 01:25:01,050 In 1950, you had the European Coal and Steel Community 1408 01:25:01,050 --> 01:25:02,530 coming into play. 1409 01:25:02,530 --> 01:25:05,850 Now, that's a bloc of six nations there to trade 1410 01:25:05,850 --> 01:25:07,570 in those essential materials. 1411 01:25:07,570 --> 01:25:11,450 You have France, Germany, Italy Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg - 1412 01:25:11,450 --> 01:25:17,210 the six European nations most physically affected by the war. 1413 01:25:17,210 --> 01:25:19,610 And you can see by incremental steps, 1414 01:25:19,610 --> 01:25:23,090 these countries are deliberately coming closer together 1415 01:25:23,090 --> 01:25:26,530 so the kind of disaster that took place with the First World War 1416 01:25:26,530 --> 01:25:30,850 and the Second World War couldn't happen again. 1417 01:25:30,850 --> 01:25:33,650 If you can create this kind of trading bloc, 1418 01:25:33,650 --> 01:25:35,850 or almost this idea of a single state, 1419 01:25:35,850 --> 01:25:37,890 you can't therefore have a war 1420 01:25:37,890 --> 01:25:40,530 because you no longer see each other as separate countries, 1421 01:25:40,530 --> 01:25:43,810 you see each other as kind of brothers and sisters. 1422 01:25:43,810 --> 01:25:47,810 And that makes a lot of sense to the French, to the Germans, 1423 01:25:47,810 --> 01:25:49,050 to the Dutch. 1424 01:25:49,050 --> 01:25:51,970 These nations experienced what it was to have foreign soldiers' boots 1425 01:25:51,970 --> 01:25:54,690 marching up and down their lanes, 1426 01:25:54,690 --> 01:25:59,490 to have their people subject to control by foreign nations. 1427 01:25:59,490 --> 01:26:01,050 Britain never experienced that. 1428 01:26:01,050 --> 01:26:04,050 So perhaps it's not surprising that Britain feels 1429 01:26:04,050 --> 01:26:05,850 it's never lost its sovereignty, 1430 01:26:05,850 --> 01:26:10,090 it's damn well not going to lose its sovereignty now. 1431 01:26:10,090 --> 01:26:13,610 The economic boom that followed the post-war slump 1432 01:26:13,610 --> 01:26:16,570 created a new prosperity that particularly benefited 1433 01:26:16,570 --> 01:26:19,970 the war's biggest losers. 1434 01:26:19,970 --> 01:26:23,570 Germany would not count itself as a big winner in 1945 1435 01:26:23,570 --> 01:26:28,930 but it certainly looks like it came out of it in the best possible way. 1436 01:26:28,930 --> 01:26:31,130 One of the huge ironies of the Second World War 1437 01:26:31,130 --> 01:26:33,450 was that if Germany had not gone to war, 1438 01:26:33,450 --> 01:26:36,130 nothing could have prevented Germany from dominating Europe 1439 01:26:36,130 --> 01:26:40,730 within 20 years by entirely peaceful economic and industrial means. 1440 01:26:40,730 --> 01:26:42,250 Look at Germany today. 1441 01:26:42,250 --> 01:26:46,450 Germany is a thriving, representative democracy 1442 01:26:46,450 --> 01:26:48,490 with a strong economy. 1443 01:26:48,490 --> 01:26:52,450 Japan also benefited from the post-war settlement. 1444 01:26:52,450 --> 01:26:55,650 But there was another winner from the Second World War 1445 01:26:55,650 --> 01:26:58,570 and that was China's Mao Zedong. 1446 01:26:58,570 --> 01:27:01,410 It's said that when the Japanese Prime Minister 1447 01:27:01,410 --> 01:27:04,170 visited Mao in Beijing in 1972 1448 01:27:04,170 --> 01:27:07,090 and apologised for the Japanese invasion of China 1449 01:27:07,090 --> 01:27:09,890 back in the '30s, Mao supposedly said to him, 1450 01:27:09,890 --> 01:27:11,730 "Well, actually, you don't need to apologise 1451 01:27:11,730 --> 01:27:13,210 because if you hadn't done that, 1452 01:27:13,210 --> 01:27:15,730 the Chinese Communist Party would never have come to power. 1453 01:27:15,730 --> 01:27:18,650 Victory of the Japanese opened the way 1454 01:27:18,650 --> 01:27:22,010 for Mao and the Chinese Communist movement 1455 01:27:22,010 --> 01:27:26,090 to confront Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalists, effectively, 1456 01:27:26,090 --> 01:27:28,930 and to win the civil war four years later. 1457 01:27:31,770 --> 01:27:36,090 In 2019, as we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the start 1458 01:27:36,090 --> 01:27:39,930 of the Second World War, the forces that drove it into being seem 1459 01:27:39,930 --> 01:27:43,810 to be raising their ugly heads once again. 1460 01:27:43,810 --> 01:27:46,730 One of the reasons for fighting the Second World War was to free 1461 01:27:46,730 --> 01:27:49,690 the world of tyranny, from suppression 1462 01:27:49,690 --> 01:27:55,050 and in order to foster liberalism, democracy and all these big ideas. 1463 01:27:55,050 --> 01:27:59,050 Today there's an almost near collapse of trust in the liberal 1464 01:27:59,050 --> 01:28:05,410 elites and one's fear that all sorts of very illiberal elites 1465 01:28:05,410 --> 01:28:07,050 may once again be ascendant 1466 01:28:07,050 --> 01:28:10,250 is something I think we should be very frightened of. 1467 01:28:10,250 --> 01:28:14,170 It's always easy to look at the past and make distinctions and say, 1468 01:28:14,170 --> 01:28:17,530 "No, no, it was different then. We've moved on." 1469 01:28:17,530 --> 01:28:21,050 Well, believe me, the world really hasn't changed all that much. 1470 01:28:21,050 --> 01:28:23,570 We need to be aware in the 21st century 1471 01:28:23,570 --> 01:28:26,650 that the shadow of these wars hangs over us 1472 01:28:26,650 --> 01:28:29,250 and we that don't want to repeat them. 1473 01:28:29,250 --> 01:28:31,970 But that's something we have to educate people all the time 1474 01:28:31,970 --> 01:28:34,730 into understanding what happened in the Second World War 1475 01:28:34,730 --> 01:28:36,930 and making sure it never happens again. 1476 01:28:36,930 --> 01:28:39,650 Because if the world does go to war again then the numbers 1477 01:28:39,650 --> 01:28:44,930 are going to be much bigger than the World War II numbers.