(suspenseful music)
In the last year of World War II,
two gigantic armies charge across Northern Europe
to pommel Nazi, Germany into submission.
It's a headlong race between the largest armies
ever assembled in human history.
On one side, the Soviet Red Army
on the other side, the army of the Western Allies,
their target Hitler's Berlin.
If you get Berlin,
you are the victors of the war in Europe.
The race is on
and the stakes could not be higher.
Berlin is the control lever,
the gateway to controlling the center of Europe.
And if you control the center of Europe,
you control the whole continent.
But it's a prize with a massive cost.
The devastation, the bloodshed,
is just simply unbelievable.
It completely changes world history.
Each army must travel 700 miles
to stop a madman,
700 miles for victory,
700 miles to control the future of Europe and the world.
(bomb exploding)
What happens and how it plays out
are still being felt, even now.
(upbeat music)
(rocket launching)
(upbeat music)
(tank engines revving)
In the early years of World War II,
Hitler's armies conquer most of Europe.
But in 1942, the tide turns.
And by the summer of 1944,
Germany is in trouble, and The Allies are closing in,
but Hitler will not yield.
Even at this stage of the war,
Hitler still has this complete grip on Nazi Germany.
Toppling Hitler,
all depends on the number three.
Of the alliance of nations that come together
to oppose Nazi Germany,
three countries will determine the outcome of the war
and the future of Europe.
Of course, there are other countries involved as well,
but the big three, the United States,
the Soviet Union and Great Britain are the most important.
The Big Three confer,
Roosevelt, Churchill and Joseph Stalin.
The strength of the Alliance
of these three nations is vital,
but they're not exactly best buddies.
They're tactical allies for the sake of winning the war.
But the relationship between the Western Allies
and the Soviet Union is far better characterized
by frankly, hatred in a lot of ways.
Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin,
who sentenced one million of his own people to death
during the great purge
has a bit of an image problem.
(suspenseful music)
Stalin is a despotic dictator.
He's an absolute monster.
UK Prime Minister,
Winston Churchill in particular has no love for the man
or his politics.
Churchill's view was that Stalin
was a really disgusting, horrible figure.
Churchill was decidedly anticommunist.
He was absolutely against the political Sovietization
of Central and Eastern Europe.
Stalin, for his part
has more than 8 million reasons
to resent his Western partners.
Since 1941 Stalin and the Soviet Union
have done the majority of the fighting
against Hitler's army.
(cannons exploding)
It's been a blood bath.
(airplane engine roaring)
(guns firing)
8.1 million members of his Red Army are dead, missing
or taken prisoner.
10 times what the USA and the UK
will suffer over the entire war, combined.
Now Stalin is furious about this.
And Stalin's view is, "We're really doing
"all the heavy lifting here.
"And it's about time that the Western Allies
"did something as well."
Now he's finally going to get his wish.
The Western Allies,
the United States, the UK and Canada
have plans to launch an unprecedented invasion
into France from the West.
Meanwhile, Stalin's Red Army
continues to push from the East.
And the end goal for everyone is the same.
(gentle music)
Berlin is the target,
the lair of the fascist bEast.
(gentle music)
Each side we'll fight through about 700 miles
of heavily defended enemy territory.
If you want to non-stop,
you can cover that distance in 183 hours.
It will take these armies 11 months,
an average of 0.09 miles per hour,
or about half the speed of a sloth.
Nobody's expecting this to be easy.
If the Germans are notorious for their defense,
notorious for fighting back.
But this is not just a fight
against two Fronts of Hitler's right,
it's a competition between East and West
for a much bigger prize.
(gentle upbeat music)
The one hand their smiles and agreements,
but both sides are actively preparing for what comes next.
Really it's very much an ideological contest
between Soviet communism versus capitalism and democracy
with Berlin being the center of that objective.
The race to Berlin is the competition, in a way,
between the Western Allies and the Soviets
to get to Berlin before the other side does,
winning the right to impose your political system.
(gentle upbeat music)
The race is set.
Each side will have six months to build up their strength
before the coordinated assault begins.
The Soviet Red Army will be directed
by none other than Stalin himself,
since the ruthless dictator has some trust issues,
23,000 of them.
Stalin doesn't trust anyone on the planet.
You know, he's suspicious of everybody.
I mean, anyone who kills 23,000 officers in his army
before the outbreak of the second world war,
that's pretty paranoid.
Commanding the Western Front
is general Dwight Eisenhower.
Eisenhower is a much different leader than Stalin.
People actually like Ike.
Eisenhower is a really good man.
You know, he's decent, he's honorable.
So they're quite different characters.
On the eve of the allied invasion of Europe,
there's a big number on Ike's mind, 50%.
It's at the heart of the most difficult decision
he will make in the war.
As an ambulance driver during the London Blitz,
Kay Summersby witnessed to the darkest days of the war.
Now three years later, on the evening of June 5th, 1944,
the 35 year old is driving general Eisenhower's staff car
out to Greenham Common airfield.
Eisenhower decides to go to Greenham Common
where the 101st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles,
are about to make the trip over to Normandy.
Eisenhower made a point of going
and seeing most units in his army,
as much as he possibly can,
which is quite unusual for senior commander.
A nurse tries to hand the general
a cup of coffee,
but his hands are shaking too much to hold it.
In the months leading up to today, Ike's been on edge,
he's smoking four packs of cigarettes a day.
The weight of responsibility on his shoulders
is just absolutely immense.
This is the burden of high command.
(gentle music)
Walking among the 1,430 paratroopers,
Eisenhower stops to speak with Lieutenant Wallace Strobel,
jump master for plane number 23.
They don't talk about the fact
that the entire war hinges on this mission,
instead they talk about fishing.
Today's Strobel's birthday,
the young man from Michigan has just turned 22.
(gentle music)
For him and the entire 101st Airborne,
this will be their first combat deployment.
In fact, only 4% of all invasion force divisions
have seen combat.
Someone like Eisenhower, a humane man
who values the lies of every single young soldier
that is going into battle,
he's an inevitably gonna be wondering
how many of them gonna be alive the following morning.
(airplane engine roaring)
(gentle music)
As Eisenhower and Summersby
watch the 81 transport planes disappear into the clouds,
Summersby notices that the general has a tear in his eye.
(airplane engine roaring)
Ike has been told that approximately 50% of paratroopers
will likely die before they hit the ground.
The survival of Lieutenant Strobel
and everyone else on those planes
has the odds of a coin toss.
But the plan goes ahead.
Before dawn, the assault begins
and in typical American fashion, it's over the top.
17,000 soldiers dropped from the sky.
But that's just the beginning.
The main assault comes by sea.
(cannons exploding)
The scale of D-Day is just absolutely gigantic.
It includes 1,213 warships,
4,127 landing craft.
It includes 155,000 men
just on that first day.
This is on a scale that has never been seen before.
It is the biggest single amphibious invasion ever,
in the history of world.
And it all starts with one step.
By the dawn light, 20 landing craft cut the waves
in a straight shot for a distant beach.
Inside the landing craft, 22 young American soldiers
are crunched together.
It was terrible weather,
so basically they're just crashing over high seas.
(waves crashing)
80% Of them are seasick.
They've been riding through rough waves for two hours.
When the boat ramp drops open,
Captain Leonard "Max" Schroeder is the first one out.
They've arrived at 6:28 a.m.
Two minutes early,
and they're still 100 yards from shore.
(waves crashing)
So, you know, he wades into the water.
He's got his Colt 45, he's waving it above his head,
and leading his men on.
Weighed down by 80 pounds of equipment,
Max surges forward, leading his men to shore.
In the early hours of D-Day,
he is the first man to put his foot down on French sand.
It's step number one in the race to Berlin.
(suspenseful music)
And the starter's pistol is an explosion of gunfire
from entrenched German positions up the beach.
And hell is unleashed.
(guns firing)
The bullets start whizzing by and the explosions.
And you've got nowhere to hide.
Max is hit twice in the left arm and side.
(guns firing)
But the 25-year-old keeps fighting.
By the afternoon of June 6th,
he and his man have done their job,
they've secured the beach.
Captain Schroeder survives to fight another day.
But many aren't so lucky.
Of the estimated 10,000 allied casualties on D-Day,
4,414 men lost their lives.
(gentle upbeat music)
Despite the losses, the D-Day landings are a success.
The most important thing,
when you're launching an amphibious invasion,
is that it doesn't fail.
(gentle music)
And D-Day doesn't,
it's really very, very successful.
Eisenhower could breathe a sigh of relief.
Pre-invasion casualty estimates
had been almost four times higher than they turned out.
And only 338 American paratroopers were killed,
far below the 6,500 he'd been told to expect.
At the end of the day,
The Allies secure the foothold they need on French soil.
Between D-Day and the end of the war, 2.5 half million men,
half a million vehicles
and 4 million metric tons of supplies
will pass through the beachhead.
In the race to Berlin, the Western Allies
are first out of the blocks.
(gentle music)
DNA was stand in history
as one of the greatest military feats of all time.
The Alliance were on their way to Berlin.
(gentle music)
Western Allies are off to a great start,
but on the Eastern Front, Stalin is seizing.
He's got 30 million reasons to be out for vengeance.
Stalin and Hitler had been allies,
but in 1941, Hitler being Hitler, betrays Stalin.
(crowd cheering)
When the blow came
it was from five different directions.
Stalin was absolutely shocked
when Hitler invades the Soviet Union,
and Hitler's invasion is brutal.
Many people believe that the Soviet Union
was actually going to fall.
(suspenseful music)
Somewhere between about 27 and 30 million people
in the Soviet Union died,
vast majority are civilians,
which tells you the nature of the German war effort.
It's not a regular war.
This is a war of extermination, it's a war of blood.
But the Soviets fight back
fueled by the biggest draft in history.
(speaks in foreign language)
This war is not an ordinary war.
It is a war of the entire Russian people.
Before the end of World War II,
almost 30 million troops will be drafted
to serve in the Red Army.
And that's one new soldier
for every person lost to Hitler's invasion.
A lot of young men weren't properly trained,
didn't have proper uniforms.
They had bad equipment.
They were taken from their villages and just said,
"Okay, you're going to the frontline now,
"you have to fight because we need you."
(upbeat music)
In June of 1944 with his army now replenished
and the Western Allies invasion of Europe underway,
it's time for Stalin to strike in the East.
Bagration, is Stalin's plan
for the great summer offensive of 1944,
the largest, bar none, single ally campaign in World War II.
On D-Day, the Western Allies invasion force
numbered approximately 155,000.
But that's nothing compared to the number Stalin has.
He begins his race to Berlin
with a force more than 10 times bigger.
(upbeat music)
Stalin gets together over 2.3 million men.
We're talking thousands of tanks,
thousands of trucks, thousands of aircraft.
It's absolutely massive.
Hitler by this point has around about 1 million troops
on the Eastern Front.
They're setting up this horrific defense
that the Soviets are gonna have to go through.
(upbeat music)
Stalin's problem
isn't the number of men he's got,
but how to hide the fact that he's got so many.
The goal, catch the Germans off guard.
What Stalin wants is to try and hide from the Germans.
But you know, there is this storm of steel coming their way.
To keep 2.3 million men a secret,
it's going to take Stalin's secret weapon, Maskirovka.
Maskirovka is a Russian word for disguise or deceit.
Stalin does a number of things in order to deceive Hitler,
having fake radio signals,
having fake army groups, which don't really exist.
(suspenseful music)
Stalin's ploys to make it appear
the attack will come in the Ukraine
when he actually plans to attack further North
in Byelorussia.
(gentle music)
Gentler of course was no military strategist.
The Germans are duped.
They move huge numbers of German tanks to the South.
And that left them virtually defenseless.
Stalin is about to find out just how long
he can keep his 2.3 million men a secret.
(train engine revving)
The Germans had laid these vast minefields on their Front
in order to prevent the service from coming through.
In the dead of night,
on the Byelorussian Front, 21-yeah-old Pyotr Makeyev
slips between trees, careful not to make a sound.
The work that Pyotr and his team are doing
is incredibly dangerous, deactivating minefields
in preparation for the invasion of Bagration.
Pyotr clips barbed wire and pulls it away,
creating a safe channel for troops in the rear
to move through.
These young men had to crawl out into these minefields
and very, very carefully try and find out where they were
and then deactivate them by taking them apart.
(gentle music)
To do it in the dead of night where you can't see anything,
you can't communicate, you don't know where the mines are,
was enormously dangerous work.
Many of Pyotr brothers in arms
will be killed in the attempt.
(bomb exploding)
But by the time they are done their work,
the Front has been cleared for Stalin's surprise assaults.
(upbeat music)
Hitler is still none the wiser.
But how much time does Stalin have before he is?
(upbeat music)
Vasily Ermolenko is on the frontline ready for the attack.
Like every Soviet soldier,
after three years of fighting for survival, he's exhausted,
physically and mentally,
even his boots are falling apart.
And yet by Bagration comes along
and this gives them all this tremendous boost of hope.
Because finally, this is the chance
that they're going to actually be able to show the Germans
what they've got.
On June 22nd, it begins.
(cannons exploding)
The battle begins early in the morning
and it begins with artillery barrage.
(cannons exploding)
So these guns that had been lined up,
all the way down for kilometers,
all of a sudden start to fire.
32,000 Pieces of artillery,
open up on German defenses,
firing a total of 192,000 metric tons of ordinance.
The Germans are just all of a sudden
faced with this massive barrage,
pounding down on them.
And the Germans don't know what hit them
because they weren't expecting this at all.
And then they become terrified.
After the artillery, the Red Army,
Ermolenko included surges forward.
Waves and waves of troops smashing into the Germans.
They scramble and try to fight back,
but it really doesn't help.
They start to surrender.
And this is such a moment of triumph
for the Red Army soldiers.
It's a complete and utter victory
for the Soviets from the moment go.
Stalin's maskirovka is so successful,
it takes three days before Hitler realizes
he's made this enormous error of judgment.
Three days is all it takes
to give Stalin the advantage he needs.
All along the Eastern Front,
the Red Army pushes into occupied territory,
rapidly gaining ground.
Stalin takes back all the territory he's lost since 1941
and then some.
(bombs exploding)
Bagration is the most territory gains
in the shortest period of time and all of World War II.
So in the span of about two months,
they make it all the way to Poland.
The Germans suffer 350,000 casualties,
over 40% of their defending forces.
(suspenseful music)
It's absolutely staggering,
how successful Bagration is to Hitler's absolute fury.
And Stalin of course is jubilant.
Finally, there's a sense of retribution, sense of revenge.
(upbeat music)
By August of 1944,
the Red Army has advanced 400 miles,
more than halfway to the German capital.
The Western Allies, meanwhile,
have only made it 150 miles towards Berlin.
(gentle music)
The allies get stalled in France.
People often think, you know, June 7th,
the day after D-Day, it's all over.
It's not over.
The allies had tough go.
(guns firing)
Advantage Stalin.
But he's paid for the lead in blood.
His Red Army suffers over 770,000 casualties.
While the Western Allies suffer just over 226,000.
There's a quote famously attributed to Stalin,
"One death is a tragedy, a million deaths, a statistic."
The bottom line is that Stalin
doesn't care how many people die.
All he cares about is winning.
(gentle music)
(tank engine revving)
Commanding the Western Front,
Eisenhower has been taking a more measured approach
on the road to Berlin than Stalin.
In terms of character, in terms of personality,
you almost couldn't find two people more opposite.
Because Eisenhower is very cautious,
he's very concerned with the welfare
of his own men and women.
After the success of D-Day,
the Western Allied armies get bogged down
by heavy German resistance in Normandy.
(bombs exploding)
Allied bombing,
followed by overwhelming forces is what actually breaks 'em.
(bomb exploding)
And the American forces burst that way through that hole.
The Western advance
is finally picking up steam
and Eisenhower is hoping to make up ground
in the race to Berlin.
But at a time when any delay counts,
he's got a problem in Paris,
20,000 problems actually.
Paris has been under Nazi occupation for four years.
And the more than 2 million citizens want the Germans gone.
Eisenhower though, has other ideas.
In the pre-invasion planning,
Eisenhower never had any intention of fighting for Paris.
The plan was to bypass Paris.
It's not a major military objective for The Allies.
It's only in the French minds that Paris is important.
With the Germans attention
on the allied invasion,
the French Resistance make their move.
(bomb exploding)
The uprising by the French Resistance
that starts on the 19th of August, 1944.
(guns firing)
It's a bit of a ragtag army
armed with whatever they can get their hands on,
but it's quite sizable.
The resistance has up to 20,000 fighters
determined to help liberate Paris,
which puts their numbers on par with German occupiers.
But they only have 600 guns,
one for every 33 fighters.
Despite being badly outgunned,
the Resistance have the backing of the people of Paris.
But the Germans don't back down.
(upbeat music)
Hitler is insisting they fight for every yard.
(guns firing)
So there's quite vicious fighting.
And there are a number of casualties.
(upbeat music)
Eisenhower and his generals
have been keeping an eye on Paris and the rising body count.
2000 Parisians and 800 Resistance fighters killed,
thousands more are wounded.
But diverting troops from the frontline to help
risks stalling their advanced to Berlin.
It very quickly becomes clear
that they simply can't let this
turn into a kind of bloodbath,
they're gonna have to do something about it.
Eisenhower says, "Yes, okay, we'll send in the troops."
(tank engine revving)
Two days later, allied troops enter Paris
and the tide of the uprising turns
in favor of the Resistance.
But there's still one more wrong left to right.
(upbeat music)
When the Germans first took Paris in 1940,
they ordered a French firefighter
to hang a swastika from the top of the Eiffel Tower.
He complied, but swore he would take it down one day.
(gentle music)
Redemption is never easy.
For Lucien Sarniguet, it will take 1,671 steps.
August 25th, the battle for Paris is raging,
the city is in chaos,
but Sarniguet is singularly focused.
His kept a tricolor the red, white and blue flag of France
since the surrender back in 1940.
And he seized this opportunity
to raise the tricolor on the very top of the Eiffel Tower.
Sarniguet and three fellow firefighters
rush to the base of the Eiffel Tower.
As the four men begin to climb the thousand foot tall tower,
the Germans open fire.
(guns firing)
There was heavy fighting, Germans were shooting at him.
And then he saw another team of Frenchmen
doing the exact same thing.
So it became kind of a foot race.
Sarniguet rushes to close the distance.
Gasping for breath, the 45 year old
reaches the last of the tower's 1,671 steps
to see his competition raising their own tricolor
in place of the swastika.
Sarniguet swore he'd be the one to do it,
but in the moment
of seeing the French flag flying once again,
his disappointment gives way to elation.
It was never about him,
this was about France.
You're not just raising one flag,
you're taking down the flag of your oppressor.
So in a way that raising of the tricolor or the Eiffel Tower
is the moment that Paris has liberated.
(gentle music)
The remaining German troops surrender
in the face of overwhelming odds.
But the liberation of Paris
has cost the Western Allies time,
putting them even further behind the Soviets
in the race to Berlin.
(tank engine revving)
Which means Stalin, already ahead of the game,
has 63 days to kill.
(gentle music)
At August, 1944, Stalin's Red Army
is approaching the Vistula River,
just on the other side, Warsaw.
(upbeat music)
Just like the Parisians, the Polish home army
thinks liberty is at hand
and they rise up against the German occupiers in Warsaw.
But to the surprise of the home army fighters
and the Germans,
the Red Army stopped six miles outside the city
and doesn't budge.
The Russian army is ordered to stay put.
There's no reason why they couldn't have helped
but it was the malice of Stalin,
not wanting to spend his forces for Poland.
Warsaw is abandoned.
For the residence, the number 13
represents their last hope of escape.
Civilians can't get out.
So they're just simply massacred by bombing
and by shellfire.
(bombs exploding)
Girl scout, Anna Kowalska may only be 13 years old,
but she is no stranger to combat.
The AK, the Polish home army
was very much a young people's movement
made up of people in their teens and early 20s.
And this included young boy scouts and girl scouts.
They worked as couriers, hid things in their houses.
They dobbed graffiti on the walls
in the aid of the resistance movement.
Throughout the uprising,
Anna has been an essential courier,
dodging German gunfire and leaping barricades.
Now she has for most difficult task,
40 feet below the city in a river of filth.
The home army have used the sewer system in Warsaw,
throughout the Warsaw uprising,
to move around the city underground.
Girl scouts, who of course were very small, very slim,
could work in the sewers.
And they were the ones
who actually mapped out the routes through the sewers.
Desperate to escape German artillery,
Anna leads people in groups of 50
through the maze of tunnels.
Below, it's almost pitch-black.
Some lose consciousness because of the smell
and have to be carried.
And for those carrying them, the journey takes five hours.
At last, they reached the exit manhole,
gasping for fresh air.
Behind them, Warsaw burns.
And just across the river, the Red Army
watches it all happen.
In three days, over 5,000 Poles escape bombardment
before the sewer entrance is destroyed.
But thousands more are left behind to face Nazi wrath.
(gentle music)
In the end, after 63 days,
it's Germans have managed to take Warsaw,
fiercely crushing the Warsaw uprising.
(building crashing)
All this time, the Red Army
remains effectively at a standstill.
For Stalin, it's a calculated risk,
he can kill two birds with one pause,
allow the Red Army to resupply before the push to Berlin
and also set the stage for his post-war ambitions.
(upbeat music)
Politically it's in Stalin's interest
to see the destruction of Warsaw.
Stalin's making it very clear what he wants out of this war,
and he wants Central and Eastern Europe
to be under Soviet control.
He wanted to eliminate Polish resistance
to make sure that the resistance
that the Soviets would face, was gone.
(upbeat music)
But those 63 days
waiting for the Warsaw uprising to fail,
risks losing Stalin his lead in the race to Berlin.
Because at the other end of Europe,
the Western Allies are making headway.
(crowd cheering)
From the moment they come to Paris,
suddenly the race is on.
You know, they're charging through Northern France
and Eastern France.
By mid September, 1944,
the Western Allies have advanced through France and Belgium
to the doorstep of Germany's Western border,
340 miles from Berlin.
But they're about to face their greatest challenge yet,
the Siegfried Line.
The Siegfried line is a series of German defenses
West of the River Rhine.
This is a major, major obstacle that The Allies face.
Built over three years from 1936 to 1939,
the Siegfried Line is more than 390 miles long,
but has only one purpose,
to stop anyone from getting into Germany alive.
It has 22,000 bunkers.
The defenses go almost 20 miles deep.
It has never been breached.
But there might be a way through.
And one number, 69, holds the key.
Eisenhower's methodical advance
has kept us forces relatively safe up to now.
But has him trailing Stalin in the race to Berlin.
A fact that frustrates Winston Churchill.
Churchill believed that getting to Berlin
quickly and ahead of Stalin is really very, very important.
The British prime minister pressures Ike
to gamble on a shortcut.
There is a gap in the Siegfried Line
which is in Northern Holland.
That gives you the chance to burst through into Germany,
to try and get to Berlin by Christmas.
(tank engine revving)
It's Highway 69.
But that route requires capturing key bridges
in a risky lightening strike
in order to secure a path across the River Rhine.
Eisenhower, didn't like the plan.
And that leads to a significant military debate
between The Allies.
But war isn't always about military strategy.
It's often about political strategy too.
In the end, Eisenhower agrees to roll the dice
with the largest airborne operation in history.
Operation Market Garden is the allied effort
to try and force away through
around the Northern edge of the Siegfried Line.
On September 17th, 34,600 men
are airlifted into combat
in an attempt to break through German lines.
But after only eight days,
The Allies suffer 17,000 casualties
and are forced to withdraw.
Market Garden was a giant gamble and it failed.
And it costs sizeable losses for The Allies.
Highway 69 gains the nickname Hell's Highway.
Eisenhower took a risk and it cost him.
Now he knows they can't go around the Siegfried Line.
If The Allies want to get to Berlin,
they'll have to go through it.
The Battle of Hurtgen Forest
is just one of a series of battles
that takes place all along the Siegfried Line.
It's one of the most
heavily defended spots on the Line.
54 square miles of dense woods, deep ravines
and high ridges.
And the Western Allies, biggest enemy,
a 100-foot-tall pine tree times several million.
The whole allied way of war is to use fire power,
tanks and vast amounts of artillery.
But in a dense pine forest, how do you do that?
The infantry have got to actually gain the ground.
(upbeat music)
November 14th, 1944,
20-year-old Private Floyd A. Fulmer
advances through the thick forest.
Everything is silent.
(gentle music)
As he inches forward, he is surrounded by the bodies
of those who came before him,
reminding him of just how deadly this place is.
(guns firing)
Suddenly the trees come alive with gunfire.
(guns firing)
Mowing down the men as they stumble and dive for cover.
Fulmer scrambles to make it to a foxhole.
(guns firing)
But it's too late.
He's hit, his body drops lifeless to the ground.
(guns firing)
The rest of his squad is forced into retreat.
In the chaos Fulmer's must be abandoned.
Afterwards, he is listed as missing and presumed dead.
(guns firing)
One more fallen soldier in a forest filling up with them.
By the Hurtgen Forest campaign, on December 16th, 1944,
an army of 120,000 will suffer 33,000 casualties,
a rate of 27.5%.
We look back on these things and we say,
well, eventually they won,
but we often forget that it came at significant costs.
(gentle music)
In all the Siegfried Line
will cost the Western Allies 250,000 casualties
and stall their advanced on Berlin for months.
(gentle music)
(motorcycle engine revving)
In the East, Stalin watches as the Germans
divert more troops to the Western Front.
And he knows his day will come,
a day marked on his calendar by the number one.
(upbeat music)
By the end of December, 1944,
the Red Army has been standing down for five months
outside of Warsaw.
But they've been busy with a massive logistical buildup,
132,000 carloads of supplies,
9 million rounds of ammunition,
30 million gallons of fuel.
Stalin starts to build up the supplies
in preparation for this winter offensive.
And Stalin is just determined to push as far Westward
as he possibly can.
January 12th, 1945,
the Red Army is on the march again.
For three weeks, they drive unrelentingly
through Poland towards Germany
and all over the depleted Nazi defenses
with their vastly superior numbers.
There's about a five to one discrepancy
between the Germans and the Soviets by this point.
(tank engine revving)
(upbeat music)
295,000 German troops
are killed in three weeks.
That's an astonishing 14,000 every single day.
By January 31st, the Red Army has covered 270 miles
to the banks of the Oder river.
That thrush through Poland is everything for the Russians.
Then basically you're right on the German doorstep.
(gentle upbeat music)
The Red Army now sits only 40 miles
from the finish line in Berlin.
(bombs exploding)
As you get closer and closer to Berlin,
the German soldiers start to fight more
and more and more ferociously.
Facing fierce resistance,
Stalin pauses the Soviet advanced once more.
He wants to make sure his Red Army
can crush the Germans on their home turf.
He wants to consolidate their forces
and to build them up for that last thrust into Germany.
(gentle music)
(bombs exploding)
February on the Western Front,
The Allies are finally passed the Siegfried Line,
battling their way into German cities and towns
on the banks of the River Rhine.
By the end of March, they've crossed the Rhine
and are into the German Heartland.
In March, 1945, it's clear to Eisenhower
that Hitler doesn't have a hope of winning.
In most wars, usually people surrender
when they're not going to win.
But Hitler has no intention of surrendering.
He's insisting his army defend to the last man standing.
So with Berlin, just 175 miles away,
Eisenhower changes focus.
His primary objective is of course
to deliver victory to the allied forces.
But he wants to make sure that the goal is achieved
without dramatic losses or as few losses as possible.
That now becomes the paramount goal, not the race to Berlin.
Eisenhower decides it's better
to isolate Berlin,
cut off the enemy's supply lines
and slowly suffocate the remaining German resistance.
But he'll need Stalin to go along with this plan.
(bomb exploding)
Eisenhower sends his telegram
to Stalin on the 28th of March, 1945.
You know, he's a pretty straightforward, honest kind of guy.
And I suppose his hope is
that by being straight with Stalin,
Stalin will be straight with him.
(suspenseful music)
Eisenhower wrote the telegram
to assure Stalin his intentions,
that an American thrusts of Berlin
would be a waste of time and effort.
And all they had to do is basically wait it out.
As Stalin gets this telegraph
and he's absolutely thrilled.
He says, "Yes, yes, we absolutely agree.
"We don't think that Berlin
"is particularly important strategic point anymore either."
And then the first thing he does
after answering the telegram
is to call together his generals
and to figure out how they're going to take Berlin
as quickly as possible.
(upbeat music)
It's April 1st, April Fool's Day.
Eisenhower has made the mistake
of underestimating Stalin's willingness
to sacrifice Soviet lives to get what he wants.
(crowd cheering)
And the next date on Stalin's calendar, May 1st.
(gentle music)
The final push to Berlin will involve
over 2 million Soviet troops,
6,250 tanks
and 41,000 pieces of artillery.
(cannon exploding)
More than 750,000 German troops stand between them
and the German capital.
On April 15th, the assault begins.
1.2 million shells rain down on the first day.
After nine days of intense fighting,
Red Army troops have surrounded Berlin.
They swarm into the city.
Their goal, the Reichstag,
the traditional seat of the German government.
(bombs exploding)
They're like locusts.
I mean it is carnage, destruction, death, mayhem,
everywhere you look.
(bomb exploding)
The race to Berlin has been run
for 11 months and 700 miles.
But the last 1,200 feet takes seven hours to cross.
(upbeat music)
April 30th, 1945,
20 year old Kazak Lieutenant Rakhimzhan Qoshqarbaev
and his comrade Grigory Bulatov take cover.
(guns firing)
The battle is raging around the Reichstag.
The Germans are fiercely defending it.
And these two young men
who've been fighting for such a long time,
have a very precious cargo with them.
(guns firing)
Two men carry a Soviet flag.
Their orders are that the flag
must hang from the Reichstag by May 1st,
International Workers Day.
Exactly the kind of political home run
Stalin is looking for.
They're sneaking toward the Reichstag.
There's sniper fire, there's rifle fire,
there's shrapnel going off,
but they managed to get inside.
(guns firing)
Heavy German resistance
pushes back at them as they ascend the steps.
By the time they get safely to the top
night has fallen.
They complete their mission in the dark
with just over three hours to spare,
hanging the flag and officially
declaring a winner in the race to Berlin
at 8:40 p.m. on April 30th, 1945.
(gentle music)
They were going to take pictures of this flag
waving above the Reichstag.
But the problem was of course, by this point,
it was dark and the image didn't work
and nobody really sees it.
And so they wrap the flag back up again and retreat.
(guns firing)
The race began with gunshots over Utah beach.
It ends with a gunshot as well.
A few hours before the Soviet flag
is planted on the Reichstag,
28 feet underground, Adolf Hitler puts a gun to his head
and pulls the trigger.
(gun firing)
By the end of the battle of Berlin,
Soviet casualties stand at 81,000 dead or missing.
The Germans have lost at least 100,000.
Stalin has the victory he craved, but it isn't enough.
He needs the world to see it.
(upbeat music)
It's the photograph of the guy on Reichstag
that's important to Stalin.
However, it's not until the 2nd of May,
when they re-enact the moment,
that the famous picture of the young soldier
reaching out and putting the flag up on the Reichstag,
is actually photographed.
(upbeat music)
One last deception from the master,
Joseph Stalin.
(upbeat music)
The unqualified winner of the race to Berlin,
even if he was one day late.
(upbeat music)
Stalin's getting to Berlin first
is a great propaganda coup,
which bolsters his own image in the Soviet Union.
It's a glorious moment for the Russians
and for Stalin personally,
but it's wasteful.
You commit tens of thousands of boys to their graves
in order to hoist a flag.
For Stalin it's just one more small sacrifice
for victory and glory.
Stalin wins the race for Berlin
because he wants it more that The Allies,
because he's prepared to sacrifice
more of his men to achieve it.
It is absolutely unquestionably, the Eastern Front,
where the most blood is spilled.
Over 50% of all German casualties took place
within these last 12 months of the war.
And 80% of those casualties were on the Eastern Front.
The Western Allies face 25% of the German army.
The Soviets faced 75%.
The Soviet Union lost more than 15% of its population,
but they won the race.
And for Stalin much more.
(gentle upbeat music)
In a way World War II sealed the power of Stalin
and his regime.
And he's got pretty well everything East of Berlin
and also East Germany.
An iron curtain splits Europe.
(upbeat music)
Stalin had his glory,
his territory, and a stranglehold on Europe
from which to maintain Soviet control for decades to come.
(upbeat music)