[military music]
[narrator] On the 13th of April 1943,
German troops deep in Soviet territory
make a grisly discovery.
In Katyn Forest near Smolensk in western Russia,
they stumble upon a series of mass graves
containing more than 4,000 bodies.
All officers from the Polish military,
including an admiral, generals, and majors.
For Nazi propaganda minister, Josef Goebbels,
news of the mass graves
is a desperately needed opportunity.
It is clear the graves have been there for several years,
so Goebbels and the German High Command
know that these Polish prisoners must have been killed
by the Soviets soon after they invaded Poland in 1939.
Goebbels believes he can use this information
to turn Churchill and Roosevelt against Stalin
and weaken their alliance.
But despite Goebbels' attempts to publicise the massacre
and turn international opinion against the Soviets,
he is no match for Stalin's duplicity.
When questioned by his allies,
the Soviet leader denies all knowledge of the massacre
and pins the blame firmly on the Nazi regime,
and Churchill and Roosevelt accept his assurances.
They are about to enter the critical phase of the war,
and they need Stalin and his Red Army
as much as he needs them.
[theme music]
[slides clicking]
‐[explosions] ‐[troops marching]
[bombs hiss]
[narrator] In 1942, the Soviet Union,
the United States, and Great Britain,
whilst theoretically united against the fascist Axis powers,
were, in practice, nations apart.
Stalin's Soviet forces were isolated and suffering,
desperately defending their western territories
from the Nazi invaders.
[distant artillery]
The Americans were still in shock
after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour,
and as newcomers to this war, were still finding their feet.
And Churchill, despite pleas from Stalin and Roosevelt,
was still determined to postpone the invasion
of northern France until he could be
absolutely sure of victory.
In August 1942,
Churchill flew to Moscow to meet with Stalin.
It was supposed to be a meeting
of all three of the major Allied powers,
but Roosevelt was unable to attend
because of his health.
What's remarkable, and we know this now
because of the recently published Ivan Maisky's diaries,
that Churchill was talking about an alliance
with the Soviet Union much earlier than people
had previously thought.
So, Churchill was willing to be flexible
in the tradition of geo‐strategic politics,
global politics, and even if that meant
working with someone
who you didn't necessarily like very well,
he understood that ultimately a Nazi Germany represented
a greater threat than the Soviet Russia.
[narrator] The Soviet Union was on its knees,
and Stalin was desperate
for Churchill and the Western Allies
to open up a western front in Europe
to ease the vast pressure on his armies in the east.
[Harshan] Stalin's demand for a second front
speaks to some of the real tensions
among the Big Three
about their own national interests,
and also their visions of what the war was for.
For him as well, this was about his prestige in The Big Three.
And so he wanted to be treated as an equal
in this common struggle against Hitler.
He was very frustrated about the fact
that Churchill would not agree
to open that second front sooner than later.
[intriguing music]
[narrator] Churchill was well aware of this
and arrived in Moscow for a series of meetings,
still determined not to give in to Stalin.
[Martin] His principle goal
is to talk to Stalin directly
because he's concerned that Roosevelt has made
a rather rash promise to embark
on a second front in France in 1942.
Now, of course,
that message could have been sent by telegram,
but Churchill also wants to open up
some kind of a personal connection to Joseph Stalin.
He's a little concerned that Roosevelt
earlier in the year has said
Stalin likes Roosevelt better than he likes Churchill,
and so perhaps Roosevelt should speak for the both of them.
Churchill did not like that.
[narrator] After the usual pleasantries,
Churchill cut to the chase
saying both British and American military advisers
had warned against
a cross‐channel invasion of France
as being too risky that year.
As far as Stalin is concerned, his prime hope
is that Churchill has come to offer a second front,
though he knows from his ambassador in London
that actually Churchill is going to try and get out of it.
And following his ambassador's advice,
he attempts to shame Churchill
by presenting the idea that the British
are scared to fight,
trying to appeal to Churchill's fighting spirit.
And he does that and Churchill is very offended.
[narrator] Churchill's response was to unfurl
a map of the Mediterranean and North Africa.
He then took a pen and started to draw
a crocodile with a dangerous snout.
Churchill draws his picture of a crocodile and says:
"You can attack a crocodile by hitting it on the snout,
or hitting it on the soft underbelly,
and the Mediterranean is the soft underbelly."
Stalin says: "Yes, I can see the advantages of doing that."
[narrator] But did Churchill really believe
this was the best way to defeat Nazi Germany?
I think Winston Churchill was convinced of the idea
that you could move into Germany or move into Europe
by pushing up through the Eastern Mediterranean.
Churchill loves this idea.
In fact, Churchill's only novel, Savrola,
is about someone who does exactly that
and leads an expedition through the soft underbelly of Europe.
[narrator] But many historians today
think Churchill was also motivated
by his desire to keep the British Empire alive.
Churchill is particularly concerned
that the Mediterranean remain under British control,
because it's the connection point,
with the Suez Canal at one, end and Gibraltar at the other,
of the British Empire,
and particularly, of course, the important part
of the British Empire, the trade.
[narrator] Stalin initially appeared convinced
and seemed to back Churchill's plans.
However, when they met the next day,
Stalin's mood had changed.
At their second meeting, Stalin decides,
I'm not going to let him get away with that,
and starts having a go at Churchill and lecturing him
that the Germans aren't that difficult to fight
if you start getting down to it.
It looks like the meeting's going to completely collapse.
When Churchill goes for his final meeting with Stalin,
it's supposed to be just saying goodbye.
They haven't agreed to anything, but they've agreed to differ.
After they've chatted for a bit, Stalin says to Churchill:
"Would you like to come back to my flat for a drink?"
So back they go to Stalin's little apartment in the Kremlin,
which was formerly Catherine the Great's bedroom,
and they sit down and start chatting and drinking,
and they're there for five hours.
They sit there talking about
military affairs that they both love.
They're both commanders‐in‐chief.
They both always stay up all the night talking.
Stalin's daughter comes in and brings them some food
and Churchill says:
"I've got a red‐headed daughter as well."
So they start talking about their children and things.
And after the end of five hours,
they leave having formed
a very strange personal relationship.
[narrator] Despite Stalin's appeals
for a more direct approach to ease the pressure
on his troops, the soft underbelly
of Churchill's crocodile, the Mediterranean,
was to be the focus for the next critical phase of the war.
[tense music]
But if Churchill had looked 400 miles northeast
to the besieged city of Leningrad,
might he have been more susceptible
to Stalin's entreaties?
[theme music]
discussing the Allies' best route to victory,
the Soviet Union's second city, Leningrad,
was under siege by the German Sixth Army.
The Nazi blockade would eventually last
nearly 900 days and claim the lives
of more than 800,000 civilians,
as well as more than 1 million Soviet and German soldiers.
[artillery]
The siege of Leningrad had begun in August 1941,
just over two months
after the launch of Operation Barbarossa,
the sudden invasion of the Soviet Union,
by three million Nazi troops.
Hitler considered Leningrad to be a key strategic target.
It was home to the Soviets' Baltic Fleet,
and second only to Moscow in terms of industrial output.
But with his invasion force spread wide
across the Western Soviet Union,
the Nazi dictator did not have the strength
in manpower or equipment to overrun Leningrad,
so he ordered his troops to encircle the historic city.
He did not want to capture Leningrad,
but to destroy it by shelling and bombing
and starving its people to death.
[loud booming]
By October 1941,
Leningrad was almost completely surrounded,
with road and rail links cut off.
The population suffered constant shelling,
and an estimated 75,000 bombs were dropped
during the 900‐day siege.
Meanwhile, the city's 3 million inhabitants
were slowly starving.
The only supply route was across Lake Ladoga.
Provisions had to be brought by boat
or across the ice during the frozen winters.
[dramatic music]
Very hard to get food in and out.
Ironically, when the deep freeze came on,
and it was possible to drive over the lakes,
then it was almost easier than when the ground was muddy
or there was heavy rain.
So the city had to be supplied basically by convoys of lorries
across the lakes,
under shell fire the whole time. It's just horrendous.
[narrator] Strict rationing was brought in
by the authorities in an attempt to conserve
the very limited supplies.
Diaries from survivors of the siege
reflect the terrible effects of the shortages.
"There is no worse feeling than when all your thoughts
are on food,"
wrote Berta Zlotnikova, a teenager.
"I am becoming an animal."
Another anonymous man wrote:
"My stomach has caved in,
my ribs stick out from top to bottom."
Ration cards became the only useful currency in the city,
with people stealing them and even killing for them.
[tense music]
Food quickly ran out. There was no electricity.
Communications were severed.
People of Leningrad were soon forced to start
eating cats, mice, dogs, leather,
whatever they could find to sustain themselves.
There were cases of cannibalism,
which were suppressed by Soviet authorities,
but it's a sign of desperation which spread through the city.
[narrator] Despite these daily horrors,
the people of Leningrad held out,
but it would be two long years of death and disease
before the Red Army finally managed to lift the siege.
While the Soviet armies struggled to fight off
the Nazi forces in the frozen east,
their Western allies were engaging the Axis powers
in the deserts of Africa.
The North African campaign began in June 1940
and continued for three years.
[loud booming]
The British forces, which included troops
from Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa,
were encamped in Egypt,
while the Italian and German Axis forces
were in control of Tunisia and Libya.
North Africa wasn't only important
in terms of attacking Germany
via the soft underbelly of Europe,
it was also vital for keeping access open
to the Suez Canal and oil in the Middle East.
[Jonathan] Britain was not prepared
to let the Suez Canal fall into enemy hands,
because that would've closed off any possibility
of using the Mediterranean as a shipping route again.
If Britain controlled the Suez Canal
and the Mediterranean, so if they had defeated Italy,
then the route to the far east, to India in particular,
was much shorter, and would free up
a lot of shipping.
[narrator] During the first 18 months
of the North Africa campaign,
each army had struggled to maintain its position
across the expanse of the Sahara Desert.
With huge distances to cover over isolated areas,
successful offensives often ground to a halt
as supplies ran out and troops were forced
to retreat to safer positions.
Primarily it is a war of logistics and supply,
and the rhythm of the campaign is entirely determined
by the capability of each side to supply themselves
at either end of a very long,
thousands of miles long supply chain.
When the allies get too far to the west,
they're too far away from their sources of supply,
which are primarily in Egypt.
Their ability to maintain themselves
and to keep moving forward is eroding day by day,
every mile west that they go.
Likewise, the Germans, whose supply lines
are stretched back to the western end to Tunisia
and western end of Libya,
when they go too far east,
their fighting effort is prejudiced.
[narrator] Defending the Allies' position
was the British Eighth Army, led by one of World War II's
most notorious military commanders,
General Bernard Law Montgomery.
A graduate of Sandhurst,
Montgomery was shot through the lung by a sniper
during the First World War and was so severely injured
that a grave was prepared for him.
However, he went on to make a full recovery,
and spent the rest of the war as a staff officer,
where he could observe tactics used
by the military high command,
and became an outspoken critic of their willingness to accept
large numbers of casualties to gain a tactical advantage.
In 1942, Churchill appointed Montgomery
commander of the Eighth Army in North Africa,
entrusting him with leading the fight
against German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel,
known as the Desert Fox.
[Sir Mike] Montgomery, I think,
was clear in his own mind,
and certainly put it to his army:
"There is no going back.
We are not going back any further.
We will stay here. We will prepare."
And to be fair, he was true to his word.
Very methodical. Some would say cautious,
unwilling to unnecessarily risk soldiers' lives.
[Jonathan] He was a very skilled general.
He understood his intelligence,
he was getting a lot of intelligence
from Bletchley Park about the weaknesses
of the German army, and he knew how to exploit that.
[narrator] El Alamein was seen as the gateway
to Egypt and the Suez Canal beyond.
At 10 p. m. on the night of October the 23rd, 1942,
the British Eighth Army launched their offensive
on the Axis forces
with a furious 15‐minute bombardment
by more than 1,000 guns.
Crucially, at this point, Rommel was not with his troops,
as he was at home in Germany on sick leave.
By the time he returned to command three days later,
German lines had been broken
and the Allies were in total control.
Hitler ordered his troops
to fight and die to the last man,
but after 12 days of exhausting combat in El Alamein,
Rommel and his remaining men
retreated across the desert back to Tunisia.
Montgomery's Eighth Army had lost nearly 5,000 men,
but Rommel's army lost more.
9,000 Axis soldiers were killed
and a further 35,000 were taken prisoner.
It had been an overwhelming victory
for General Montgomery and the Eighth Army,
but the Battle of El Alamein
was also symbolically and psychologically significant.
This was the first time in the war
the Western Allies had broken a German army on the ground
and delivered a knockout blow, sending them into full retreat.
Churchill makes the famous quote about
"this not being the beginning of the end,
this is the end of the beginning."
[narrator] In his post‐war memoirs, Churchill wrote:
"It might almost be said that before Alamein,
we never had a victory.
After Alamein, we never had a defeat."
In another six months,
the Allies would drive the Axis forces
out of North Africa completely.
As Rommel and his men retreated into Tunisia,
the allies were planning a further,
and they hoped, final operation
to remove the Axis troops from North Africa.
Operation Torch, led by General Dwight D. Eisenhower,
and launched on the 8th of November 1942,
saw a vast amphibious landing at Fedala, in Morocco,
15 miles northeast of Casablanca.
Hitler was still keen to defend North Africa
at all costs, and sent reinforcements from Germany.
However, they were vastly outnumbered
by the Allied troops made up of British, American,
Canadian, French, and Indian soldiers.
The Axis forces were trapped in Tunisia
and surrounded by the Allied armies.
In addition, the British navy controlled
the Mediterranean sea to the North,
and the RAF was in charge of the skies.
The Germans had nowhere to go, but they weren't giving up.
‐Fire! ‐[explosion]
Arriving on the Moroccan shore at Fedala,
the American forces met little resistance.
But that would quickly change.
On 19th of February 1943, Rommel ordered an assault
on the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia,
which was held by the U. S. II Corps.
The Germans inflicted heavy damage
on the defending Americans,
and the Allies suffered around 10,000 casualties
with hundreds of American troops taken prisoner.
American troops,
badly mauled at the Battle of Kasserine Pass,
are forced to retreat.
And the American high command realises
that its troops need to be far better trained,
and equally important,
far better led than they were at Kasserine Pass.
[narrator] Eisenhower replaced the lieutenant general in charge
with a more aggressive commander
would come to be recognised
as one of America's greatest ever generals
and battlefield tacticians, General George S. Patton.
Under Patton's relentless command,
the superior numbers of the Allies won out,
as they drove the Axis forces
back into a smaller and smaller area.
Remember this: you don't have to be a corpse to be a hero.
[narrator] On 13th of May 1943, surrounded by the Allied armies,
the Axis forces in Tunisia surrendered,
and more than a quarter of a million
of their soldiers were captured.
The Allies had taken North Africa,
and now had a base from which to build
the next phase of their strategy to attack Germany via Sicily.
Here General Patton would come into conflict
not only with the Axis forces, but also his supposed ally,
Field Marshal Montgomery.
The two men loathed one another almost more than their enemy,
with each determined to outshine the other.
As the strike through the Mediterranean
got underway in earnest,
America and Roosevelt were also focused
on becoming the dominant power in the Pacific,
and that would mean taking on the imperial forces of Japan.
[theme music]
[narrator] The surprise attack on Pearl Harbour
in December 1941
had left the U. S. armies shocked and humiliated.
But six months later, a reinvigorated U. S. military
took part in a huge naval and aerial battle
which would go on to define the war in the Pacific:
the Battle of Midway.
[explosion]
For the Japanese, the success of Pearl Harbour
left them determined to eliminate
any American military presence in the Pacific.
The first step would be to attack and take control
of the small island of Midway,
the westernmost U. S. held territory in the Pacific.
This island more than 3,000 miles west of the USA,
and 2,500 miles from Japan, was home to a U. S. naval base,
and was seen by Japanese command
as the gateway to domination of the Pacific Ocean.
The Japanese approached the battle
with a clear advantage in firepower.
But the U. S. had a different strength: intelligence.
American codebreaking teams based in Hawaii
had intercepted Japanese communications
about their secret plans.
The Japanese intended to fake an attack
on the Aleutian Islands north of Midway,
diverting the American fleet away from their real target.
In addition, U. S. codebreakers had discovered the time,
location, and the plan of attack on Midway.
As they approached Midway on the 4th of June 1942,
the Japanese were expecting to carry out
a surprise attack on the U. S.,
just as they had at Pearl Harbour.
This time, the tables had been turned.
[loud booming]
American planes bombed the Japanese carriers
which still had dozens of aircraft on deck
being refuelled.
The Japanese lost three carriers almost immediately.
[loud booming]
So at the time, Pearl Harbour was thought
of as a disaster for the Americans
and a huge success for the Japanese
because they had sunk all the American battleships.
With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that things
were a little bit different than that.
The American aircraft carriers survived,
and over the course of the rest of the war,
the Americans evolved a way of waging war
involving aircraft carriers and amphibious infantry.
That allowed them to leapfrog from island to island
across the Pacific until they got within range of Japan,
and thereby created the whole new way of war
built around the aircraft carrier
rather than around the battleship,
which is still broadly the way that navies operate today.
[narrator] The battle continued for three days,
and while the Japanese rallied,
they never regained the initiative.
The Battle of Midway ended in a resounding U. S. victory.
The Japanese lost more than 3,000 men,
four carriers, and hundreds of aircraft at Midway,
while the United States lost just 362 men,
one carrier, one destroyer, and 144 aircraft.
[explosions in distance]
The Battle of Midway turned
the war in the Pacific on its head.
The Japanese imperial expansion had been stopped,
and now the Americans would push them back,
island by island.
[explosions]
With its Navy once more in command of the seas,
the U. S. forces planned to seize control
of the many Pacific islands.
[gunshots in distance]
And one of the most brutal battles of the campaign
took place at Guadalcanal.
This British colony, one of the Solomon Islands,
had been invaded by Japanese troops in July 1942.
But the Allies wanted to reclaim it,
and on the 7th of August, their first major land offensive
in the Pacific began.
6,000 U. S. Marines landed on Guadalcanal
and seized the airfield,
surprising the 2,000 Japanese soldiers there.
With both the U. S. and Japanese seeing Guadalcanal
as strategically important,
a ferocious fight for control of this territory began.
Both sides poured reinforcements onto the island.
By October, the Japanese had around
36,000 ground and naval troops there.
The savage combat went on for months in the island jungle.
In a bid to regain control of the island's airstrip,
the Japanese sent 7,000 troops on 11 transport ships,
protected by two battleships.
The Allies had received intelligence reports
that the convoy was coming,
and sent every available unit in the area
to attack the Japanese fleet.
After an intense battle,
most of the Japanese ships were sunk.
[artillery fire]
Finally, in February 1943,
the Japanese completely overwhelmed,
were forced to evacuate 12,000 of their remaining troops
from Guadalcanal.
From then on, the Japanese were only able
to send supplies and reinforcements by submarine,
and as their numbers and morale dwindled,
the Allied forces gradually took control.
Japan could only go on the defensive
against an increasingly powerful United States.
[reporter] No Jap planes attacked this beachhead.
American air power rules the Solomon.
And 1943, the year of strength has just begun.
The leaders have planned, the United Nations
are sworn to attack until there is peace
with the unconditional surrender of the Axis.
with war raging in the Pacific, North Africa, and Russia,
Churchill and Roosevelt met in Casablanca
to decide upon future plans for the war.
The Americans come to Casablanca hoping for agreement
that the next operation will be the invasion of northern France.
The British come hoping that the next operation
will be to continue their movements
in the Mediterranean.
They managed to persuade the Americans to agree
they will at least embark on the next operation,
which is the invasion of Sicily.
The Americans say that will be it,
and then we'll transfer
our attentions to northern France.
The British, I think hope that, well,
we hope it won't be it. Once we've got Sicily,
the obvious thing to do would be to carry on into Italy.
[narrator] Roosevelt was still keen
on an Allied invasion in western France,
though less so than Stalin,
who had declined the invitation to the conference
because of the dire situation the Red Army
and his people were facing at Leningrad.
So far, Churchill's plan had succeeded.
FDR, distracted by events in the Pacific,
and without Stalin to back him up,
once again allowed the British Prime Minister
to have his way,
and the second front in Europe was again postponed.
I think Roosevelt recognised that...
the Allies, western Allies, were simply not ready yet.
For example, they did not have
sufficient flat bottom boats to convey invading troops
onto the beaches.
[narrator] One overarching conclusion
that was reached in Casablanca,
with which Stalin would certainly have agreed,
was that there were to be no deals with Hitler.
The only goal of this war was total victory
and unconditional surrender of the Axis Powers.
[intriguing music]
In July 1942,
Stalin and the people of the Soviet Union,
already suffering aerial bombardment
and starvation in Leningrad,
were facing a vicious assault from the Nazis
in another Soviet city.
Situated on the banks of the Volga River
in southwestern Russia,
Stalingrad was a key strategic target for the Nazis.
It was one of the Soviet Union's main producers
of tanks, armaments and tractors,
and taking control of it would sever transport links
with southern Russia.
The Battle of Stalingrad, which lasted seven months,
is regarded as the bloodiest and most brutal battle
of the entire Second World War.
[Sir Mike] I'm not sure any other battle,
certainly in Europe,
comes close to Stalingrad.
It is a big city, Stalingrad.
The Volga, huge river flowing through it.
Very important industrially to the Soviet Union.
So totemic, and in strategic terms,
basically, um...
it stopped the Russians' ability to cross the river Volga.
[narrator] As important as the military victory
was the potential propaganda victory
the Nazis would have by seizing the city
bearing the Soviet leader's name.
It had great symbolism is his mind,
he was not going to let this fall to the Germans.
It was the important supply route
on the Volga River, which moved goods
from the south of Russia to the north.
But Stalingrad was also in Hitler's path
as he moved his forces south,
so it was absolutely imperative that the city
didn't fall to Hitler.
[narrator] Stalin steadfastly refused
to concede to the Germans,
and on the 28th of July issued Order No. 227,
which decreed that the city's defenders
would take "not one step back."
He also refused to allow the evacuation of any civilians,
stating that the army would fight harder
to defend the people who lived there.
[loud boom]
More than 300,000 crack German soldiers
were tasked with taking Stalingrad.
On 23rd of August, the Luftwaffe launched
a ruthless aerial assault on the city,
launching wave after wave of incendiary bombs
which razed most of the city's wooden housing to the ground.
By mid‐September,
the Germans had pushed the Soviet forces back
into the very centre of the city,
a 9‐mile‐long strip along the Volga.
[distant artillery]
Within weeks, the Nazis controlled
two thirds of Stalingrad,
and Hitler broadcast a message that the city was about to fall.
But Stalin stuck by his promise to defend it at all costs,
and sent in more reinforcements.
Under the leadership of General Zhukov,
one of the few competent Red Army commanders
to have avoided Stalin's purges,
the Soviets dug in and engaged the enemy in close combat,
street by street, house by house,
and even floor by floor.
In the city you can't move
great fleets of tanks, and...
it's messy, it's short, short range stuff.
The techniques are rather different.
The ammunition expenditure in built up areas is vast.
They are different, different beasts.
[narrator] The Nazi invaders became increasingly tired
and dispirited by the heavy losses
they have suffered.
Conversely, the Red Army was buoyed
by successfully holding its ground,
and while keeping the Nazis at bay,
they planned a counteroffensive of their own outside the city.
On the 19th of November 1942,
Operation Uranus was launched north and south
of the Axis troops,
attacking the weaker divisions at the flanks
of the German attack,
rather than the crack troops on the frontline in the city.
The operation totally surprised the Nazis,
and within four days,
the German and Axis armies outside Stalingrad
were completely surrounded,
leaving the divisions in the city cut off.
Hitler refused to allow them to retreat from the Volga River
and ordered them to stand and fight.
But this was a losing battle.
Winter was setting in,
and food and medical supplies were running out.
[distant artillery]
Eventually, on the 31st of January 1943,
the Germans surrendered.
Stalin and his Red Army had finally won
the Battle of Stalingrad.
[sombre music]
This was Stalin's greatest victory in the entire war,
but it came at great cost.
More than a million Soviet soldiers
are estimated to have been killed, wounded, or captured,
and more than 40,000 civilians also died.
The tolerance
for casualties of the leaders of the Soviet Union
is remarkable.
The Russians executed 13,000 of their own men
in the course of the battle of Stalingrad
for not fighting hard enough. 13,000.
The Russians were willing to send
men into action in Stalingrad without weapons.
They were expected to... When things were most desperate,
they were ferried across the river Volga,
dropped on the bank, told to climb up the bank
and pick up a rifle as they went
and then go and fight the Germans.
There was an acceptance of the requirement
to sacrifice for the motherland.
[narrator] The Axis forces also sustained heavy losses,
an estimated 800,000 men.
It was as close as the Germans got
to breaking through right into the heartland.
And the fact that Nazi Germany was roundly defeated,
it was very symbolic.
[narrator] The impact of the victory was immense.
Stalingrad was undoubtedly the key turning point
in the war between Germany and the Soviet Union,
and also in the overall battle
between Allied forces and the Axis powers.
But just as the tide finally seemed to be turning
in favour of the Big Three,
the Nazi discovery of thousands of corpses in mass graves
in a forest in western Russia
threatened to cause a major rift between the Allies.
[theme music]
April 1,
when Nazi soldiers discovered more than 4,000 bodies
hidden in mass graves
in Katyn Forest in the Soviet Union,
all the evidence suggested
that the killings had been carried out by the Soviets
during their invasion of Poland.
The carve‐up of the country had been agreed
between Hitler and Stalin
in the Nazi‐Soviet non‐aggression pact.
The victims, who had been shot in the back of the head
and buried, were Polish military officers,
and the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels
was now keen to publicise the massacre to the world
in an attempt to break the alliance
between Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt.
But Goebbels was to be disappointed.
Whatever Churchill and Roosevelt may have suspected
about Stalin's part in these murders,
they could not afford to lose him as an ally.
There was very little doubt
that both Roosevelt and Churchill knew
that the Soviets were responsible for the massacre.
But again, it was a trade‐off,
certainly for Roosevelt, and even for Churchill.
Are we going to kick up a fuss about this?
Churchill is quoted as saying:
"Alas, it's probably true."
The Soviets, of course, denied that they'd been responsible
and accused the Germans of having killed the Poles
when they went through the area in 1941.
That was their official story.
[narrator] At the time, 4,443 bodies
were found in Katyn Forest,
but we now know that more than 22,000 Polish intellectuals
and officers who had been taken as prisoners of war
were rounded up and shot by the Soviets
before being dumped into mass graves
in different locations in western Russia.
They were generals, majors, chaplains,
university professors, lawyers and engineers
targeted by Stalin
and the Soviet Secret Police, the NKVD.
It was an attempt to crush resistance
to the Soviet invaders
and prevent the resurgence of an independent Poland.
The scale of the massacre is now undisputed
since the execution documents were made public.
After the Nazi‐Soviet Pact was agreed,
Red Army troops move through eastern Europe,
occupying territory that was agreed
as part of the secret protocol of that pact.
Now, as part of that movement across Europe,
Stalin wanted any pockets
of potential anti‐Soviet resistance to be eliminated.
It's very much in keeping with how he'd operated
throughout the 1930s.
And this is when the Polish prisoners
who were housed in western Belarus
and western Ukraine come into this,
because he saw them as potentially dangerous.
They could be a rallying point of anti‐Soviet opposition.
Moreover, if he got rid of these prisoners,
who were officers, they were Polish intellectuals,
he might also head off the possibility
of a resurgence of a Polish government.
And, of course, he was looking to install
his own communist government in Poland.
[narrator] In April 1943, three years after the killings,
and almost immediately after the Red Army
had recaptured the region from the Nazis,
the Soviet cover‐up began.
[sombre music]
The NKVD destroyed a cemetery
the Germans had permitted the Polish Red Cross to build
and removed other evidence.
In January 1944,
Moscow appointed its own investigative body,
which unsurprisingly concluded
that the Polish prisoners had been murdered in 1941
during the German occupation, not in 1940.
But the cover‐up extended far beyond
the borders of the Soviet Union.
Documents released in 2012
showed how far Churchill and Roosevelt
were prepared to go in accepting Stalin's denials.
The Polish government in exile, based in London,
was pushing for an independent inquiry into Katyn.
But archives now show us that in April 1943
Churchill wrote a note to Stalin,
saying he would "oppose vigorously"
any investigation.
Roosevelt's language was more diplomatic,
but his meaning when he wrote to Stalin
was the same:
"I am inclined to think that Prime Minister Churchill
will find a way of prevailing
upon the Polish government in London in the future
to act with more common sense."
We now know from American documents
that were declassified in the 1970s
that FDR also sent a telegram to Churchill
at the end of April 1943.
Roosevelt, of course, was in a much weaker situation
than Churchill,
because he had a large Polish‐American constituency,
one of the bedrock elements
of the New Deal voter coalition were Polish‐Americans,
and they looked to Roosevelt to do something to ensure
the independence of their homeland
after World War II.
After all, the British had gone to war in 1939 to defend Poland.
But here we were in 1944, apparently getting ready
to set Poland up for domination
by the Soviet Union after World War II.
[narrator] Churchill's ambassador
to the Polish government in exile, Owen O'Malley,
wrote his own report,
which came to some uncomfortable conclusions:
"There is now available
a good deal of negative evidence,
the cumulative effect of which
is to throw serious doubt on Russian disclaimers
of responsibility for the massacre."
Churchill sent the full report to Roosevelt
with the following notes:
"I should like to have it back when you've finished with it,
as we are not circulating it officially."
The people who ordered and carried out this massacre
were never brought to justice,
but eventually in 1990,
the eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union,
Mikhail Gorbachev, did accept responsibility
for his country's role in the tragedy.
Solidarity is a universal value
that is becoming fundamental
for progress and human survival.
[narrator] We now know without a doubt
that Stalin was behind these killings.
But at the time, the Big Three
had other, more pressing concerns,
such as keeping the alliance together
to defeat Hitler.
[theme music]
Next time on Race To Victory.
The Big Three meet face‐to‐face for the first time in Tehran.
But as a result of the successes and failures
of battles already fought,
the dynamic of their relationship is changing.
It's very clear to Churchill that he's on the outs
and that Stalin and Roosevelt are getting closer and closer,
and Churchill's starting to struggle to find a place,
a reason to be there.
[narrator] And while the Allied forces
fight their way into Italy,
a second front in France is finally agreed,
despite Churchill's concerns.
The Americans always believed that the war in the West
would be won in France, not the Mediterranean.
[narrator] To be successful in the fight against Hitler,
the Big Three will need to put their differences aside
once and for all.
The Final Phase of the race to victory
is beginning.
[theme music]