The Big Three are meeting for the first time.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill,
American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
and the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
They have come to the Iranian capital Tehran
to decide the future of the war in Europe.
[sombre music]
On the second day of the Conference,
Churchill presents Stalin with a sword inlaid with jewels.
Its handgrip is bound in gold. Its crossguard is solid silver.
And on its blade are inscribed the words
"To the steel‐hearted citizens of Stalingrad."
Stalin passes the sword to Roosevelt
who holds it aloft and cries,
"Truly they had hearts of steel!"
The Big Three appear united.
But away from the cameras, tensions are growing.
Secret frustrations, rivalries and disagreements
are threatening the relationship between these three men.
And the rivalries are not only between the leaders.
As Allied forces move from North Africa
into the Mediterranean,
two generals, Montgomery and Patton,
have entered a very personal race
to be the first to take Sicily and Italy.
[explosions]
Will the first face‐to‐face meeting
between the Big Three
save this crucial wartime alliance,
or pull it further apart?
[theme music]
[explosions]
[slides clicking]
[explosions]
‐[explosion] ‐[artillery fire]
[narrator] 1943 marked the turning of the tide
in the Second World War.
The months leading up to the Tehran Conference
saw setback after setback for Nazi Germany,
Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan.
‐[solemn music] ‐ In the Atlantic,
the German submarine offensive against British
and American shipping was faltering.
Advances in Allied technology
and an aggressive hunting strategy
began to inflict heavy losses on the German U‐boat fleets.
[explosions]
In North Africa, German and Italian resistance crumbled.
[explosion]
Hundreds of thousands of Axis troops
surrendered to General Montgomery
and the British Eighth Army.
[loud boom]
But the fiercest fighting was in the east.
[artillery fire]
The brutal five month battle for Stalingrad
had finally come to an end in February 1943.
And the Russians had emerged victorious.
Germany's Sixth Army had been wiped out,
and the Axis Powers had suffered almost a million casualties.
[Peter] Through the efforts of the people of Stalingrad,
but also the 62nd Red Army,
through street fighting, which was at close quarters,
the Red Army and the citizens of Stalingrad
managed to push back the Germans.
This is important
because of the psychological victory provided,
and the momentum
after Stalingrad really turns towards the Soviet side.
[narrator] German morale had been severely dented.
The Wehrmacht's aura of invincibility
had been smashed.
And Hitler was determined to strike back.
Plans were drawn up for a new offensive
on the Eastern Front at Kursk,
280 miles southwest of Moscow.
[Jonathan] Operation Citadel was the German attempt to regain
the initiative on the Eastern Front
after the disaster of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942‐1943.
So it was designed to be a major battle
that would suck in and destroy a large part of the Soviet Army.
[narrator] Leading the attack
would be the Nazi's latest innovation in tank warfare,
the Panzer Mark V.
Known as The Panther,
it was hoped that it would counter
the fearsome Soviet T‐34.
It was the Wehrmacht's best hope
of finally defeating the Red Army.
The Panthers would lead the Nazi's new offensive
on the Kursk salient,
a 160‐mile‐long bulge in the Russian frontline.
Their attacks would come from the north and south,
a pincer movement to cut off
and destroy the trapped Soviet troops.
But this time Joseph Stalin was prepared.
Intelligence had revealed there was a troop build‐up
on the Soviet border.
The Red Army was no longer the disorganised rabble
it had been two years earlier.
And they had weeks to prepare for the German assault.
They were very much
a different army to what it was
on the Barbarossa invasion.
Open country.
Huge numbers of tanks on both sides.
The Wehrmacht is outmanoeuvred
and outgunned by the Red Army.
[narrator] The Russians built a series of defensive lines
almost 25 miles deep.
The ground was mined
and criss‐crossed with anti‐tank ditches.
Gun emplacements had been dug into the earth.
And more than 3,000 tanks and around 1.3 million soldiers
stood ready to repel the German attack.
On July 5th, 1943,
after a barrage of artillery fire,
hundreds of German Panzer tanks
rumbled towards the Soviet lines.
[Peter] The Battle of Kursk
was simply the largest tank battle in history.
There were 6,000 tanks, there were 5,000 aircraft.
Like Stalingrad, this involved an immense number of troops.
There were two million fighting in this battle.
It was really Hitler's last roll of the dice.
[narrator] The Germans inflicted heavy losses on the Red Army,
but still they could not break through
the massed Soviet defences.
The battle of Kursk is probably definitive
in the way the Russian Front was going to end,
which was in Nazi withdrawal.
And Kursk arguably
puts the end to any hope on the Nazi side
of regaining the initiative.
[Jonathan] It ended up being a strategic defeat
for the Germans, and again,
re‐emphasised the fact that the next stop,
well, maybe not the next stop,
but the end of the line anyway, lay in Berlin, not in Moscow.
[narrator] As the Battle of Kursk ground to a halt,
more than a thousand miles away
another military offensive was underway.
Following their victory in North Africa,
the Allies wanted to continue their success
and fight their way into Europe through the Mediterranean,
what Churchill called
the "soft underbelly" of the Nazi beast.
Their first target was Italy,
and their access point, the island of Sicily.
[Sir Mike] Well, Sicily has importance of itself,
a large island in the Mediterranean,
the Mediterranean was a naval motorway from Britain
through to Egypt and, of course, beyond.
You wouldn't really think of invading Italy
whilst leaving Sicily behind you in the hands of your enemy.
Sicily was a stepping stone
towards Allied operations in Italy.
[narrator] Three months before the invasion
in April 1943,
German agents recovered the body of a British Royal Marine pilot
from the waters off a Spanish beach.
Documents handcuffed to the officer's wrist
led Hitler's forces to believe
that the Allied attack on Italy
would come via Greece and Sardinia.
Nazi troops were moved to those places
to defend the German positions.
But the documents were an elaborate hoax
by British intelligence codenamed Operation Mincemeat.
[Jonathan] The Germans knew that there was going to be
some kind of Allied attack somewhere in the Mediterranean.
They didn't know where it was.
And so the British dressed up a dead body,
dumped in the sea off Spain
with supposedly the plans for an invasion
to distract the Germans.
[narrator] The Italian island
was garrisoned by around 300,000 Axis troops,
and they were caught off‐guard.
On July 10th, 1943,
Allied paratroopers attacked from the air
while landing crafts stormed the beaches.
Operation Husky had begun.
It was an immense undertaking,
involving 150,000 troops, 3,000 ships and 4,000 aircraft.
‐[engines hum] ‐[suspenseful music]
[explosion]
[narrator] The German commander, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring,
soon realised the best he could do
was delay the Allied invaders
while preparing a retreat to the mainland.
Meanwhile the American and British forces
embarked on their own private race.
[artillery fire]
As the U. S. Seventh Army under General Patton
advanced up to the north of the island,
the British Eighth Army under General Montgomery
took control of the east.
Both Generals were highly respected, brilliant leaders.
But they were at odds with each other.
And after Montgomery had led the Allies
to success in North Africa,
Patton was determined
to drive the United States to victory in Sicily
and be recognised
as the greatest general of the war.
If Montgomery was the preeminent,
one of the preeminent soldiers of the Second World War,
Patton, I think, you'd have to put down
as one of the preeminent warriors of all time.
This was a fighting man who loves fighting,
who operates at a level of instinct.
Whereas I think Montgomery is a much more rational general.
The strength of that is that it means
you do have a bit more scope for these flashes of insight
that can prove very productive.
And Patton was lucky, as well as good,
in the sense that he had a good tool
for executing these flashes of insight.
The weakness, of course, is that it can mean you are either wrong
[laughs] or reckless,
I think you see both of those traits
in Patton's career as well.
[theme music] of Axiss
escaped across the water to Italy,
the invasion of Sicily became a race
between the American and British generals.
‐[explosion] ‐ Both wanted their troops
to be the first into Messina,
the vital port on the northeast tip of Sicily.
[Jonathan] Patton did not play the game
the way that Montgomery expected it to be played.
In Montgomery's mind,
the British were going to drive up
the east side of Sicily
with the Americans on their left
across the middle of the island.
And Patton, at a pretty early stage,
realised it was going to be quite a difficult thing to do,
and therefore it might be better to race all the way round
the edges of Sicily instead.
[narrator] Advancing up the east coast,
Montgomery's troops were slowed temporarily by the Germans
as Kesselring used the island's mountainous terrain
to his advantage.
This was a chance
for the American general to get ahead.
And to Montgomery's dismay,
it was Patton's troops that entered Messina
on August 17th, 1943.
The allied invasion of Sicily
was relatively quick and successful.
It was a clear marker
that the Allies were engaged in Europe,
that they were winning,
and that ultimately they could succeed
and gain a victory against the Axis powers.
[Jonathan] What it did do was demonstrate, number one,
that the Allies were going to make sure
that they re‐established control of the Mediterranean.
Number two, that they were going to come on fighting the Axis
on their home soil.
And number three, it was instrumental
in deciding the Italians to drop out of the war
and to change sides in September of 1943.
The loss of Sicily made it clear
that the Italian mainland was next.
The Italians tried to avoid that fate by leaving the Axis
and surrendering to the Allies.
[narrator] The triumphs of 1943 at Stalingrad,
North Africa, Sicily, and Kursk
brought the Allies in sight of total victory
over Nazi Germany.
But behind the scenes,
not only was there division between the generals,
there was also division between the Big Three.
They did not agree over the best route to victory,
nor over what would happen to Europe
once victory had been achieved.
[narrator] While British and American troops
fought in Sicily, gaining ground from the Axis forces,
on July 24th, 1943,
Benito Mussolini was voted out of office
by his own Grand Council.
Mussolini, known as Il Duce,
had ruled the Council since 1922.
But as Allied armies entered the Italian mainland,
the leaders in Rome saw that defeat was imminent.
And the King Vittorio Emanuele III
ordered Mussolini's arrest and imprisonment.
In September, while German and Allied troops
battled viciously on her soil,
‐Italy surrendered. ‐[crowds cheering]
Despite the successes of the Italian campaign,
there remained tensions between Churchill and Roosevelt.
[suspenseful music]
Winston Churchill knew early on in the war
that American support was vital for an Allied victory.
He'd exchanged hundreds of letters
and cables with Roosevelt,
as well as meeting him in North American waters
in 1941.
The blunt, emotional Churchill
and the cool, charming Roosevelt had become friends.
There was, however, a major difference between them.
Churchill wanted to preserve the old ways
and retain the British Empire.
But Roosevelt wasn't going to destroy the Nazi Empire
and Imperial Japan,
only for Britain to retain sovereignty
over her imperial dominions.
For the idealistic President,
this war was a fight for liberty
and self‐determination for nations across the globe.
[Harshan] So much of the war aims,
as articulated in several of their discussions,
involved thinking of liberating Europe
from, if you like, the Nazi, fascist empire.
But then, of course, the ramification of that
would mean potentially,
especially in Roosevelt's understanding,
that that would also mean self‐determination
for the British Empire as well.
[Warren] Increasingly, what happens is
they start imagining
what the world is going to look like after the war,
and the problem is that each man had a unique vision
for what the world would look like after the war.
And so the tie that bound them
in this alliance started to fray quite significantly.
[narrator] And it was already clear
that Britain would not be the dominant power.
Roosevelt commissioned one of his closest aides,
Harry Hopkins,
to report on the possible future relationship
between the United States and the Soviet Union.
He concluded that Russia's post‐war position in Europe
will be a dominant one,
and every effort must be made to obtain her friendship.
Roosevelt quickly recognised
that Stalin was going to be a major player
not only in the war, but in the post‐war era,
and he set out to develop good relations with Stalin.
He believed that he was more capable of doing so
than Churchill,
because Churchill had a record of anticommunism
dating back to the 1920s.
[narrator] Secretly, Roosevelt sought
a private meeting with Stalin in Alaska,
to which Churchill was not invited.
The purpose was to pave the way
for a post‐war U. S.‐Soviet relationship.
At first, Stalin seemed open to the idea,
but then doubts set in.
Stalin was determined to exact a high price
for his post‐war cooperation.
Since 1942,
he had been calling for a second front in Europe.
Soviet soldiers and civilians were dying in their thousands.
Stalin needed a diversion
to draw German troops away from the east.
But his allies had pushed back again and again.
Churchill, in particular,
had insisted that they were not yet ready
to invade occupied France.
Stalin remained very, very concerned
that the Western Allies were deliberately letting
the Soviet Union do most of the fighting,
bleeding it dry, and therefore weakening it
for the post‐war situation.
[narrator] When the Western Allies
again delayed the invasion of France
in May 1943,
Stalin used it as an excuse
to cancel the meeting with Roosevelt in Alaska.
naturally suspicious nature, s
running a war separated by thousands of miles
was far from ideal.
Coordinating operations over such vast distances
was difficult.
Communications were slow
and in danger of interception by the enemy.
It was time
that the three leaders met face‐to‐face.
Roosevelt himself, of course, was not particularly mobile
because of his disabilities, though he was prepared to fly,
which was very brave of him.
Churchill, on the other hand,
had already covered a lot of miles,
and during the course of the war,
covers about 100,000 miles traveling.
So he is willing to travel
and actually sees a big advantage
of being the man who travels,
because he can join the Big Three up.
So he wasn't necessarily that anxious
for a Big Three meeting,
because he quite liked being the only one
who connected the three of them together,
because it enabled him to set the agenda,
to manage the relationship in ways
that actually meant that British lack of power
was balanced by his willingness to put himself about.
[narrator] But Roosevelt continued to push
for face‐to‐face talks between all three of them,
while Stalin kept putting him off.
Baghdad was suggested.
Then Basra.
Stalin turned them both down.
[Martin] Stalin hated flying
and also hated getting out of any way
he could not be absolutely assured of his security.
So the kind of places that they can actually meet
were distinctly limited.
[Iwan] He would always use the excuse,
some people would say justification,
others would say,
"As the Commander‐in‐Chief of the Soviet armies,
we're engaging in heavy fighting with the Germans.
I cannot be too far from the front."
[narrator] Stalin could not put off the meeting forever.
When the Iranian capital Tehran was suggested,
he finally agreed.
Iran was under joint British‐Soviet occupation,
so there were already Russian troops there.
And Tehran was just a few hundred miles
from the Soviet Union.
Stalin could travel most of the way by train.
The Conference was codenamed Eureka,
and the date was set for late November 1943.
For the first time,
the Big Three would meet one another in person.
[Iwan] The mood was one of optimism.
They believed the corner had been turned.
The successful defence of Stalingrad
had really turned the tide.
And they now believed it was a matter of time
before the Germans would be defeated.
[narrator] Before meeting the Soviet dictator,
Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to stop in Cairo.
There they would hold their own conference
with their ally in the fight against Japan in the Pacific,
the Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai‐shek.
[Martin] At this point, Roosevelt envisages Chiang
as one of what he called the Four Policeman,
that the world after the war would be essentially managed
by the four great powers.
And he very much hoped
that the Asian great power would be China.
[narrator] Stalin had refused to attend the Cairo Conference.
Always concerned about his personal safety,
he felt Cairo was too far to travel.
Meeting Chiang Kai‐shek at Cairo could also put in jeopardy
the Soviets' Neutrality Pact with Japan,
China's sworn enemy.
Stalin placed a lot of importance
on the Neutrality Pact with the Japanese,
because a long‐time preoccupation of his
has been to avoid fighting a war on two fronts.
He knew the Soviet Union could not fight the Germans
on the one hand, and the Japanese on the other.
This meant that it was absolutely essential
that that pact with Japan was stable,
because it allowed him to turn his forces at the Eastern Front,
really at full their capacity.
[narrator] So Churchill and Roosevelt
met Chiang without him.
Officially on the agenda was the course of the war,
and indeed, the fate of Japan.
The talks would result in the Cairo Declaration,
outlining a vision of a post‐war Pacific.
Japan would lose all the territory it had seized
since 1914.
Land taken from China was to be returned,
and Korea would be independent.
But the talks in Cairo went beyond the Pacific,
and splits between Churchill and Roosevelt soon surfaced.
Churchill has made a lot of assumptions
about Roosevelt's friendship
and his commitment to Britain.
And he's tended to gloss that
into commitment to the British Empire,
because Churchill sees the two things as the same.
Roosevelt doesn't.
Roosevelt distinguishes clearly between the British Empire,
particularly the British Empire in Asia, and Britain itself.
Churchill is, for the first time, I think,
aware of Roosevelt's attitude towards the British empire.
And it worries him.
[narrator] Both men were exasperated
by the slow pace of the talks
and the constant need for translation.
Churchill had wanted to agree a British‐American strategy
before meeting Stalin,
but this had not happened.
The two leaders would instead carry their frustrations
with them to Tehran.
And if anyone could take advantage
of this crack in the special relationship,
it was Joseph Stalin.
It was Winston Churchill's 69th birthday,
and on the last day of the Tehran Conference
he was throwing a party
at the British Embassy in Tehran.
Roosevelt and Stalin were among the guests.
The Conference was the first time
the Big Three had met face‐to‐face.
And despite public displays of unity,
the leaders had argued during the talks.
It was a clash of egos and ideas
that threatened to undermine the alliance.
Churchill's birthday dinner was the last chance
to put aside the rancour and division,
ready for the final assault on Nazi Germany.
[Martin] All three of them are very conscious
that if they're going to succeed
in securing victory against Nazi Germany
as allies in Europe,
they're going to have to continue working together,
because Germany has a good position
in the centre of Europe,
and they're going to need
to continue coordinating their activities.
[narrator] The Tehran Conference had started two days earlier.
Stalin made sure he was the first to arrive.
He had no intention of letting Churchill
and Roosevelt gang up on him.
From Stalin's personal point of view,
he wanted the same prestige within The Big Three.
He wanted to be treated as an equal within that trio.
He felt Roosevelt and Churchill were not taking him seriously
in that respect.
[narrator] When Churchill and Roosevelt arrived,
they were presented with shocking information
from Soviet intelligence.
Agents had uncovered a plot to assassinate the Big Three
while they were in Tehran.
German commandos were allegedly in the city
and preparing for the opportunity to strike.
The story has become legend in Russia,
the subject of books and films.
But Western historians are more sceptical
about whether the Germans' "Operation Long Jump"
ever existed.
[theme music]
isk in T.
While The British and Soviet Embassies were side by side
in a walled park in the centre of the city,
the American Embassy was a mile away.
Meeting up would mean potentially dangerous trips
through the narrow city streets.
Stalin, as always, had a solution.
President Roosevelt could stay at the Soviet Embassy instead.
A suite of rooms stood ready.
Despite the sudden discovery of the German threat,
it even included a new disabled bathroom
that could accommodate the ailing President's needs.
Churchill quickly offered the British Embassy
as an alternative.
But Roosevelt chose to stay with Stalin.
Roosevelt very gladly does so,
even though his security people say,
"Don't do that. They'll have bugs in your room."
And Roosevelt says,
"Good. I want them to hear what I have to say."
Because he's a pretty cunning politician.
He knows exactly what he's doing.
He's not met Stalin before.
He's not going to miss the opportunity.
And if it means treading all over Winnie,
then he's perfectly happy to do so,
because Roosevelt can be very ruthless.
[Iwan] Roosevelt's record was one
of relative friendship to the Soviet Union.
Two things Roosevelt wanted going into Tehran.
One was to reassure Stalin
that the Allies would launch an invasion of France in 1944
in order to cut off any possibility
that an angry Stalin would negotiate
a separate peace with Hitler.
And B, to try to get Stalin to make
a commitment to enter the war against Japan
once Germany is defeated.
[narrator] The British Prime Minister was unhappy
and very aware
that he was being made to feel the junior partner
in this grand alliance.
Britain had neither the manpower
nor the industrial might to match the others.
[Martin] Now Churchill,
who's staying in the British Embassy,
knows that these conversations are taking place
and he doesn't really like it.
It gets in the way of his own personal relationship
with the other two.
Churchill was having some time with...
the leaders he was working with.
Stalin, at the time, needed a lot of help.
I think he was getting a little nervous.
[narrator] The convivial Roosevelt
was to chair the talks.
But it was soon clear
that it was Stalin who was taking charge.
The discussions centred on one question.
When would Britain and America open a second front in France
to divert German attention from the east?
The Soviet records that we have
suggest that he only had one issue
that he wanted the Allies to discuss,
and that was the second front.
[Iwan] They had effectively promised Stalin
to invade in 1942 and 1943,
and a third time delay
would have been utterly unacceptable to the Soviets.
[narrator] Yet Churchill still wanted to delay the invasion.
He had been the politician in charge of the Royal Navy
in the First World War, when his record was marred
by the disaster of the Gallipoli campaign.
Churchill has this real sort of aversion to it
because he's been there before.
Gallipoli, in the end,
did not work
at very considerable cost in blood and treasure.
I think Churchill was nervous
that the amphibious invasion of France,
and thereby in northwest Europe,
might end in the same way.
And therefore
we must have everything as absolutely prepared
as we possibly can before committing.
And that takes time.
[narrator] Churchill again argued
that the Mediterranean should be the Allies' focus instead.
Turkey should be brought into the war,
and a new front opened in the Balkans
to strike at Germany from the south.
[Iwan] Churchill was of the view
that if the British plan was followed,
it was a quicker way to get into Germany,
and thereby occupy Germany
before the Soviet Union swept over
the entirety of the country.
The cause, or the non‐invasion of Western Europe
in 1942 and 1943,
was Winston Churchill's absolute insistence
that the Allies weren't ready.
[narrator] But this was not Churchill's only motive.
Some of this was to do with British imperial ambitions.
You know, they had an empire in Palestine and in Egypt
that they wanted to consolidate
and get back up and running, if you like.
So clearing the Mediterranean was an important part of that.
[narrator] Stalin had suspected Churchill
of trying to undermine his advance into central Europe,
and saw the whole strategy as an unnecessary diversion.
In his view, the only true hammer blow
would come from driving to the heart of the Third Reich
through northern France.
[Sir Mike] The moment a Western Front was opened
in Normandy, or wherever,
that would draw German attention
and they would be on two fronts,
and that would relieve pressure on the Russian Front.
That's why he was saying "Come on, get a move on."
[Martin] Stalin at one point then turns to Churchill
and says to him point‐blank,
"Do you believe in this operation?"
And Churchill has to puff on his cigar and say,
"Yes, of course I do,
provided certain conditions are met,"
which is obviously trying to find himself a way out.
[narrator] The ill‐tempered talks
went on for days.
There were insults and walkouts.
In a message to his wife,
Churchill described the meetings as "grim and baffling."
President Roosevelt pushed Churchill
pretty hard, I think,
to start up a second front in France.
And of course, Churchill was still saying,
"no, no, we can do this from the eastern Mediterranean,
create a pincer movement."
The bottom line for the Americans was
we have to have an invasion in order to satisfy Stalin.
Otherwise, the prospects of post‐war cooperation are nil.
[narrator] Churchill knew that Stalin
and Roosevelt were meeting
in the Soviet Embassy without him.
And when he requested one‐on‐one talks
with the President, Roosevelt turned him down.
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.
Stalin finally got his way.
It was agreed that battle would be joined
on the Western Front in May 1944.
British, American and Commonwealth troops
would invade France
with the greatest amphibious invasion force ever assembled.
In return,
Stalin agreed the Soviets would declare war on Japan,
however, not until Germany was defeated.
A formal agreement had been reached,
but in trying to win over Stalin,
Roosevelt had opened a rift with Churchill.
Roosevelt's sense
of his relationship with Churchill
I think, is that by this point, he's got Churchill in the bag.
He doesn't need to soft soap Churchill,
but he does need to manage Stalin.
And this is his opportunity.
[narrator] On the last night of the Conference,
the leaders gathered
for the Prime Minister's birthday banquet.
The atmosphere was uneasy,
and Stalin seemed uncomfortable in the opulent surroundings.
But as the drinks flowed, the mood lightened.
Roosevelt and Stalin presented Churchill
with birthday gifts.
While Roosevelt retired early,
Churchill and Stalin celebrated into the night.
Stalin told the Prime Minister:
"I'd like to be allowed to call you my good friend."
Churchill declared:
"I drink to the proletarian masses."
Over cigars and champagne
the alliance appeared to have been mended.
Late the following morning,
talks were held on the future of post‐war Europe,
before the summit formally closed.
But as the three travelled home, their moods were very different.
Stalin had got what he wanted from the Conference,
and Roosevelt believed
his charm offensive with Stalin had worked
and the Soviet Union would be a peaceful post‐war partner.
[Iwan] Roosevelt was thinking more and more about
the post‐war period,
and was determined to bring the war to an end
in a way that would allow for the possibility
of great power cooperation thereafter.
[narrator] Churchill's mood, however, was bleak,
because the agreement made at Tehran
already hinted at the Cold War world
that would lie beyond victory.
A world dominated not by Britain,
but by America and the Soviet Union.
[narrator] The Tehran Conference in 1943
committed Britain and America
to the invasion of occupied France by May 1944.
Stalin was delighted.
He had long pushed for this Western Front.
Now Churchill and Roosevelt had to deliver.
[Iwan] The Americans always believed
that the war in the West would be won in France,
not the Mediterranean.
[Bradner] Roosevelt finally got his guys out into Europe,
getting what he wanted, to help out.
[narrator] Churchill was fearful,
partly because of the deep scars
of the previous major amphibious landing he'd ordered
at Gallipoli in the First World War.
[Iwan] That disaster haunted him
for the rest of his life, because it was his idea.
[narrator] But was he now more confident
to the chances of success?
By early 1944, I think he was fully on board
with the decision to attack in Normandy
and thought that there was a good chance it would succeed.
[narrator] The initial plans called for landings in the south
and the north of German‐occupied France.
But the Allies did not have the resources
to mount two simultaneous attacks.
So the southern option was postponed,
and all hopes were pinned on the landings in the north,
Operation Overlord.
The landings would be dangerous.
Germany had spent years building its Atlantic Wall.
From the south of France to Norway,
the coast of occupied Europe bristled with coastal guns,
bunkers and fortifications.
But the British had gathered intelligence
about these defences.
There were a number of Polish prisoners
who'd been conscripted into the German army,
and they were captured, brought back to Britain,
and basically they'd been involved in building
Hitler's sea defences,
and so they were eye‐witness accounts.
There had been years and years of careful intelligence,
of cracking the codes at Bletchley Park,
picking up information, interrogation of prisoners,
double agents,
all this kind of stuff going on behind the scenes,
the spy stuff.
[narrator] In February 1944,
four months before the planned invasion of France,
the Allies stepped up their bombing campaign
on Germany.
This was Big Week,
a massive aerial assault
‐lasting five days. ‐[explosions]
Hundreds of American and British bombers rained fire
on the German war machine.
‐[explosions] ‐[engines roar]
[explosion]
[explosions]
[narrator] They hit airfields and aviation factories
in Braunschweig and Gotha,
Augsburg and Stuttgart,
Regensburg and Schweinfurt.
But that was just part of the plan.
Allied commanders chose targets so important
they knew the Luftwaffe would have to respond
and take to the skies.
There, the Allies planned to destroy them
with a new weapon.
The P‐51 Mustang,
a fast, long‐range fighter plane.
Despite losses of hundreds of planes and airmen,
the Allies finally broke the back of the Luftwaffe.
The Germans lost more than 250 aircraft,
and their aircraft production was set back by two months.
When D‐Day finally came,
the Allies would have control
of the skies over Western Europe.
But seaborne landings were among the most risky
and complicated of military manoeuvres.
And the Allies already had experience
of how they could go badly wrong.
[narrator] By the beginning of 1944,
British and American forces
had spent months fighting the Germans
as they made their way up through Italy.
At Monte Cassino
in the Italian mountains south of Rome,
the German Tenth Army dug in
using a bombed‐out monastery for shelter.
They resisted the Allied advance for months.
[Sir Mike] Monte Cassino sits high.
The obvious route north is through quite a tight pass.
Everything to the defender's advantage, that terrain,
and it became a bit of a slogging match.
[narrator] It was Churchill who came up with the plan
to break the deadlock.
An amphibious landing at Anzio,
to draw away the German troops
fighting in the mountains at Monte Cassino.
[Sir Mike] It's a stratagem
whereby you bypass the frontlines on land
and go in behind your enemy by amphibious landing.
[narrator] But the landing force was too small and too slow.
By the time the Allied forces pushed inland,
the Germans had rushed in reinforcements,
and months of fighting followed.
It didn't go as smoothly
as no doubt the planners had hoped,
but it certainly,
I think, did unlock what was a bit of a deadlock.
Monte Cassino falls in May 1944,
and on the 5th of June, so the day before D‐day,
the Allies liberate Rome.
So, there is clear progress on that front.
[narrator] Mussolini's rule in Italy was effectively over.
However, just days after being imprisoned,
he escaped with the help of German commandos
and set up a puppet regime until the final days of the war,
when he was recaptured by Italian communist fighters.
Victory in Italy
had come at the cost of thousands of Allied troops.
And the amphibious landings at Anzio
had shown the dangers of getting it wrong.
If the invasion of Normandy was to be a success,
lessons would have to be learnt.
In Britain in 1944, an armada was assembled.
Two million men
and nine million tonnes of supplies
were to cross the Channel
in the largest seaborne invasion ever attempted.
But as D‐Day approached,
high winds and choppy seas
threatened to delay the operation for weeks,
or even longer.
A number of meteorological factors
had to be in harmony.
The state of the moon: full,
the state of the tide,
the sea state, etc.
And there were only so many days in the month
when these factors gave a window.
And I think it was a three day window in June.
Otherwise you had to wait a month
for the next full moon.
[narrator] On June 6th, the weather settled enough
to give the Allies the opportunity they needed.
The Allied Commander‐in‐Chief Dwight D. Eisenhower
gave the green light.
Operation Overlord,
the invasion of German occupied Europe,
was about to begin.
[theme music]
[narrator] Next time on Race To Victory.
The landings in Normandy take Hitler by surprise.
[Sir Mike] Southern England crammed full of Allied troops
in readiness for D‐Day.
They set Patton up in Kent
with a whole supposed army group,
they had him driving around inspecting troops,
pretending to be the First U. S. Army Group,
which was going to bounce across the Channel
and attack Calais and Boulogne.
They had inflatable tanks and all this sort of stuff
parked in fields,
so that any German airplanes could spot them
and report back of this immense concentration.
[narrator] While the Big Three revel in the success
of getting closer to Germany,
cracks in their relationship appear.
The reality of their differing post‐war worlds
is becoming apparent.
The Big Three still face multiple obstacles
before they can win the war in Europe.
How much longer will it be
before the race to victory comes to an end?
[theme music]