All language subtitles for World.War.II.In.HD.Colour.S01E12.1080p.BluRay.x264-iFH.en

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By early 1945,
Hitler's Third Reich

was entering its death throes.

In the west, allied forces
had pushed to within

striking distance of the Rhine.

In the east, the Red
Army was crossing

the Polish border into Germany.

As the Allies battled
their way towards Berlin

from east and west, the Germans
fought them all the way.

But it was a hopeless task.

By May, 1945, Hitler
would be dead

and Germany finally defeated.

February, 1945, and the
allied forces in the west had

assembled near the Rhine for
the final push into Germany.

In the north, were
the amassed ranks of

Field Marshal Bernard
Montgomery's 21st Army Group.

To its south, was General Omar
Bradley's 12th Army Group.

It included the U.S. Third Army

commanded by General
George Patton.

On February the 8th,
Montgomery's Army Group launched

a two-pronged assault on German
forces defending the Rhine.

The northern prong
had to fight its way

through the wooded countryside.

The southern prong was
delayed when the Germans

released water from
a series of dams,

flooding the surrounding area.

It would be over two weeks
before the two prongs met up

on the west bank of the Rhine.

By early March, 1945,

Montgomery's forces
were in control

of some 60 miles of the
west bank of the river.

The next task was to cross it.

South of Montgomery,
Bradley's armies were also

moving eastward, looking for
a route across the river.

On March the 7th, 1945, they
reached the Rhine at Cologne.

But Hitler had ordered all
the bridges to be destroyed.

Then as the U.S. forces
explored further south,

they found one
bridge still intact

near the small town of Remagen.

They made a dash for it,

brushing aside
German resistance.

Then, just as they were
about to cross it,

there was an explosion.

But against the odds, the
bridge remained standing.

A small group of Americans
raced across it,

desperately cutting any
wires that looked like

demolition cables.

U.S. commanders began
to push men across

as fast as possible.

The Allies had at last
penetrated the German heartland.

In Berlin, news of the
capture of the bridge

at Remagen infuriated Hitler.

Five junior officers
were court martialled.

Four were shot.

In addition, the long-suffering
German commander in the west,

Field Marshal Gerd von
Rundstedt, was sacked.

It was the second time
it had happened to him

in less than a year.

He was replaced by
veteran commander,

Field Marshal Albert Kesselring,

who'd been in overall charge
in North Africa and Italy.

Over the next week, the
Germans launched desperate

air attacks to try and destroy
the bridge at Remagan.

None of them succeeded.

Then suddenly, on March the
17th, while combat engineers

were repairing it, the bridge
unexpectedly collapsed.

Twenty-eight men plunged
to their deaths.

The first Allied thrust into
Germany had been blocked.

Meanwhile further north,
Montgomery was preparing

the first full scale Allied
crossing of the Rhine.

On March the 23rd, 1945, he
launched an aerial bombardment

on German forces defending
the east bank of the river.

Some 200 RAF Lancaster bombers

virtually flattened
the town of Wesel.

Then British
commanders in Buffalo

amphibious vehicles crossed.

They met little opposition from
the dazed German defenders.

Other divisions followed.

The crossing lasted all night.

The following day, in the
largest airborne operation

of the war, 17,000 men of
British 6th and U.S. 17th

airborne divisions
were dropped to seize

key positions east of the river.

They were met by heavy
German anti-aircraft fire.

A newsreel report
told the story.

In a short time,
hundred of gliders

make their hazardous landings,

their men beginning the
fight as soon as they land.

One glider has its wing
shot away when only

50 feet from the ground.

More than half the gliders

were destroyed or
damaged before landing.

But within hours, the
paratroopers linked up

with Montgomery's land forces,

and the Allied
bridgehead was secured.

It should have been,
for the ferociously

competitive Montgomery,
a moment of glory.

But he'd been upstaged.

The night before his great
rival, General Patton,

had unexpectedly crossed
the Rhine near Oppenheim

and had already entered Germany.

It was a sign of the
intense rivalry between

Montgomery and American
commanders as they competed

to be the first into Germany.

Over the next few days there
were more Allied crossings.

German defences along
the Rhine collapsed.

In the north, Montgomery now
pushed deeper into Germany,

towards Munster.

In the south, Bradley's forces,

including Patton's Third
Army, pushed east

towards Marburg and Lauterbach.

The major German city
of Frankfurt am Main

were circled and bypassed.

Die hard German troops
fought back ferociously.

But by now there was no question

that the Germans were finished.

The only issue was when
they would realise it.

As the western allies battled
their way across west Germany,

Stalin's Red Army in
Poland prepared to launch

a major offensive on
Germany's eastern border.

Hitler's forces in the
region were poorly equipped

and ill prepared to
repel an attack.

Supplies of weapons
had run so low,

they were reduced to using
first World War rifles.

German intelligence estimated
the Red Army's infantry

outnumbered them eleven to one.

The Russians also had vastly
more tanks and artillery.

But the Germans
had nothing left.

Hitler's strategic reserve
had already been used up

on the western front.

On January the 12th, 1945,
the Russian offensive began

with the usual
artillery barrage.

It stretched along
a 300-mile front.

A week later, the
Red Army drove into

the devastated
remains of Warsaw.

They then pushed westwards
towards the German border,

300 miles away.

To the south a
second Soviet force

took the Polish town of
Krakow on January the 18th.

As the Soviet forces
now raced westwards

on a broad front across Poland,
they left behind pockets of

German resistance in cities
like Poznan and Breslaw.

These would later be mocked up.

By the end of January,
1945, Soviet troops

had crossed the German border
and reached the River Oder.

The Russians were now just an
hour's drive east of Berlin.

For the veteran Russian
Commander Georgy Zhukov,

it had been a triumph.

He had travelled 300
miles in just 14 days.

It was one of the
fastest and longest

blitzkrieg advances
in military history.

Zhukov's troops now paused
to catch their breath

and bring up supplies.

They were soon joined by a
second group of Soviet armies

that dug in to their south
on the River Neisse.

Meanwhile, a third Russian
force pinned the remnants

of the German armies
in East Prussia

into the Baltic port of
Konigsberg, Kaliningrad today.

Hitler had appointed the
SS Chief Heinrich Himmler

to command his forces in
the neighbouring region.

It was a sign of how deeply
he had come to distrust

his army generals.

But Himmler had no military
knowledge or experience.

During February, 1945, troops
under Himmler's command

were torn apart by Russian
forces moving west.

This time Hitler could
have sent reserves.

A large force of German
troops still occupied

the Courland Peninsula
in neighbouring Latvia.

But in another bizarre
decision, Hitler refused to

allow it to break out
and provide assistance.

He was still committed
to holding on to land,

his lebensraum, however
irrelevant or wasteful

it might now be.

It meant some 200,000
German troops

spent the final months of
the war doing nothing.

The Red Army now prepared for
its final assault on Berlin.

It lay less than 50 miles away.

In Germany the imminent
Soviet invasion caused

mass panic among the
civilian population.

The Russians had seen
first hand the horrors

perpetrated by the Germans
in the Soviet Union.

They'd witnessed whole towns
and villages destroyed,

their inhabitants massacred.

They were now very clearly
looking for revenge.

There were horrific
tales of Russian

rape, murder and pillage.

In snow and bitter sub
zero temperatures,

more than five million German
civilians on the eastern front

fled their homes and flooded
west to seek refuge.

Two million people
were evacuated by sea

from German-held ports
along the Baltic coast.

They were easy pickings
for Soviet submarines.

Twenty-four German passenger
ships were torpedoed.

They included the cruise
liner Wilhelm Gustloff,

which had over 10,000
people on board.

Barely a thousand survived,
the worst loss of life ever

in a single incident at sea.

Hitler's acting Chief of
Staff, General Heinz Guderian,

now urged the Fuhrer to
bring back any units

that could be spared
from the western front

to defend Berlin.

Hitler agreed and
brought back the elite

6th SS Panzer Army.

But he didn't send it to
Berlin, he sent it to Hungary.

He had become obsessed
with defending Germany's

last remaining source of oil,

the Hungarian oil field
west of Lake Balaton.

It was an ill-considered
decision.

In Hungary the Panzers
were hopelessly

outnumbered by the Russians.

To make matters worse, the
weather conspired against them.

A sudden thaw turned the
ground into a sea of mud.

For several days the
Panzers struggled

to hold back the
advancing Russians.

But they were steadily
forced back into Austria.

Soon they were drawn into
the defence of Vienna

as the Red Army advanced
towards the Austrian capital.

But 6th SS Panzer Army
was a spent force.

Its commander, SS General Sef
Dietrich, had no illusions.

We call ourselves, he
said, the 6th Panzer Army

because we have only
six Panzers left.

On April the 10th, the Red
Army swept them aside

and took Vienna.

As they did so, the
question now became

who would be the first
to reach Berlin.

Would it be the Red Army
or the Western Allies?

The race for Berlin had
become not just a military,

but a political issue.

By March 1945, the Red
Army was lined up

along the River Oder awaiting
a final assault on Berlin.

It presented the Allied
military command

in the west with a dilemma.

Berlin was less than 300 miles

from their advanced positions.

Most Allied commanders
wanted to race to the city

to beat the Russians.

But at a conference
a month earlier

in the Black Sea port of
Yalta, the Allied leaders

had divided up Germany
into zones of influence.

Berlin was firmly inside
the Russian zone.

So Eisenhower was instructed
to tell his commanders

to ignore Berlin and spread out

to take the rest of the country.

On April the 1st, U.S.
troops surrounded

the German industrial
cities in the Ruhr.

German soldiers
occupying the area

put up a stiff resistance.

When two weeks later
the area fell,

more than 325,000 troops
were taken prisoner.

It was one of the largest
number of German prisoners

taken in the war so far.

The German Commander,
the diehard Nazi

Field Marshal Walter
Model committed suicide.

Elsewhere in the country
resistance was more patchy,

and General Bradley's armies
stormed across Germany.

By April the 18th, 1945, the U.S.
forces

had punched a corridor
through to the Czech border,

splitting Germany in two.

Meanwhile north of the Ruhr,

Montgomery's Canadian
First Army began

the liberation of Holland.

The Dutch had
suffered horrendously

during the bitter
winter of 19441945.

The German occupying force had
deliberately taken supplies

of food and fuel from the
country to use elsewhere.

There had been widespread deaths
from starvation and cold.

The Dutch town of Arnhem was
seized on April the 15th, 1945.

Progress was rapid, and on the
following day the Canadians

had liberated Groningen, close
to the Dutch north coast.

That left a German
army virtually intact,

but surrounded, near Amsterdam.

Soon afterwards a cease
fire was negotiated.

Allied aircraft now roared
over the Dutch countryside

dropping food and
medical supplies.

At the same time the
British Second Army,

also under Montgomery's command,

pushed fast across the
north German plain.

Osnabruck fell on April the 4th.

The British were soon at
the German port of Bremen.

Here there was fierce
German resistance.

It took nine days of
house-to-house fighting

before the port was secured.

Two days later Montgomery's
British forces

reached the Elbe at Lauenburg.

As the Allies advanced
across Germany,

they now came across
horrific new evidence

of the Nazi's final solution.

In early April, 1945, U.S.
troops overran

a concentration camp
at Ohrdruf near Weimar

in central Germany.

A visibly shocked General
Eisenhower paid a visit.

The SS had evacuated
most of the prisoners,

but they had left
behind piles of bodies.

Eight days later British
troops overran another

concentration camp at
Belsen, north of Hanover.

Here they discovered
over 70,000 prisoners.

Thousands were already dead.

The remainder were starving
and disease-ridden.

A radio broadcast by the BBC
correspondent Richard Dimbleby

gave the horrific details.

I passed through the barrier

and found myself in the
world of a nightmare.

The living lay with their
heads against the corpses,

and around them moved the
awful, ghostly procession

of emaciated, aimless
people with nothing to do

and no hope of life.

Unable to move out of
your way, unable to look

at the terrible
sights around them.

It was as though they
were waiting their turn.

This is what the Germans did.

Let there be no
mistake about it,

did deliberately and slowly.

Meanwhile far to the
south in Italy,

the German front was also
starting to collapse.

The German forces were dug in
across the Apennine Mountains.

Field Marshal Sir Harold
Alexander, the Allied commander

in the Mediterranean, now
launched a spring offensive.

On April the 9th, 1945,
British troops attacked,

pulling German forces in
from along the front.

Five days later, U.S.
troops also moved forward

and swiftly reached the
south bank of the River Po.

The Germans retreated
to the north bank.

But Hitler's commander in Italy,

General Heinrich von
Vietinghoff, had no illusions

that he could hold back the
Allied advance for long.

So he now made approaches
to the Allies,

and on April the 29th
surrendered unconditionally.

It would take effect
from May the 2nd, 1945.

This was the first formal
surrender of German forces

anywhere in Europe.

The war was moving swiftly
towards a conclusion.

Back in Germany, American and
Russian forces had by now

met up on the Elbe near Leipzig.

The moment the world has been

awaiting so long, when ally
from west meets ally from east.

The meeting was
achieved on April 26th,

when a detachment of the
American 69th Infantry Division

under Major General Reinhardt
was rowed across the Elbe

to the Russians assembled
on the far bank.

The stage was set for the final

assault on Berlin.

Hitler was desperate.

He now turned to the
old and very young

for help in defending the city.

His Thousand-Year Reich was
preparing for its final

apocalyptic struggle to survive.

On April the 1st,
1945, Joseph Stalin

summoned his top
commanders to Moscow

to receive their orders for
the capture of Berlin.

Marshal Georgy Zhukov, Russia's
most successful commander,

would make the main assault
from his bridgehead

on the Oder River.

A second group of Soviet armies
under Marshal Ivan Konev

would cross the River Neisse
further south and push

deep into Germany, bypassing
the German capital.

Between them they represented
a massive Soviet force

of over two and a
half million men.

They were equipped
with 6,000 tanks

and self propelled guns,

and 40,000 guns, mortars
and rocket launchers.

But the Germans were never
going to make it easy.

The city was defended by
about a million troops.

Many were dug into strong
defensive positions,

particularly along
the Seelow heights,

a steep escarpment arising
out of the Oder Valley

and slap in front of
Zhukov's point of assault.

The defenders were a mixed
bunch of combat veterans,

SS fanatics and
inexperienced conscripts,

some as young as 14, as
well as elderly members

of the Volkssturm,
or People's Army.

By now Hitler had
retired to a bunker

under the Reich's
Chancellery in Berlin.

He was a heavily medicated
and shambling figure

who spent much of his
time issuing increasingly

unrealistic orders to
largely imaginary armies.

His public appearances were
becoming ever more rare.

But in early March he
was persuaded to visit

some of the troops preparing
to defend the Oder line.

Later in the same month,
he emerged to inspect

a small group of
Hitler Youth soldiers.

It was his last ever
appearance before the cameras.

Then on April the 13th, 1945, the U.S.
President,

Franklin Roosevelt,
died of a heart attack.

He had been one of the
architects of the war,

responsible for throwing
America's might

behind the Allied offensive.

The Nazi Propaganda
Minister, Josef Goebbels,

seized on the event
to encourage his

increasingly befuddled
Fuhrer to believe

the Allied alliance
would collapse.

A German victory could
still be snatched

from the jaws of defeat.

But any illusions were
rapidly dispelled.

Three days after
Roosevelt's death,

Zhukov began his
assault on Berlin.

He had one gun for every
13 feet of the front.

But the German defence
had anticipated

and pulled back to
avoid the bombardment.

As a result, when Zhukov's
infantry advanced

they met unexpectedly
heavy resistance.

Desperate to retrieve
the situation,

Zhukov threw in his tanks.

But they, too, were
soon bogged down.

Meanwhile to the south,
the assault by Konev's

second group of armies
had gone better.

His troops had crossed the
Neisse River and were

well on their way to their next
obstacle, the River Spree.

Stalin stoked the rivalry
between his two commanders

by authorizing Konev to
swing his tanks north

towards Berlin.

He was only too happy to see
a race to take the city.

After three days of savage
fighting, Zhukov's troops

managed to enter the
eastern suburbs of Berlin.

At the same time Konev
was approaching

the city from the south.

There was desperate
German resistance.

But on April the 25th, the
Soviet armies met up,

and the final assault
on Berlin began.

As the fighting moved on
from district to district,

civilians began to
emerge from the cellars.

But the Russians
took little notice

of the flags of surrender.

The rape of German women
and girls was widespread.

After three more days
of fighting, the city's

remaining defenders were
pinned down in a narrow strip

of central Berlin less
than two miles wide.

Every street and
house was contested.

Then on the morning
of April the 30th,

Soviet troops began an
assault on the Reichstag,

the German Parliament building.

Stalin regarded it as the
symbol of Nazi power.

They were stopped by heavy fire,

so they blasted the building
at point blank range

with heavy artillery.

That evening the
Russians stormed it.

Fighting raged
from room to room,

and up and down corridors
and staircases.

It would take four hours
before the red flag

could be hoisted on
one of the towers.

The next morning, on
May the 1st, 1945,

the event was restaged
for the cameras.

But by then Hitler
was already dead.

On April the 30th, as
fighting raged overhead,

the man whose insane
ambitions had embroiled

the world in war, laid waste
a continent and led to

the extermination
of millions of Jews

took his own life.

His long time
mistress, Eva Brown,

who he'd married the day
before, died with him.

Their partially burned
bodies were buried

in the garden of the
Reich's chancellery.

But the fighting continued.

Hitler had appointed
Grand Admiral

Karl Doenitz his successor,
and for the next few days

the new leadership attempted
to salvage something

from its nation's
cataclysmic defeat.

On May the 1st, 1945, the
day after his death,

German people were
told that their Fuhrer

had fallen in battle.

But they were told to
continue the fight

against the Bolshevik menace.

But the German leadership
was falling apart.

In Berlin Joseph Goebbels
and Martin Bormann

tried to negotiate a city wide
cease fire with the Russians.

But the Russian Commander,
Marshal Zhukov, demanded

unconditional surrender of all
German forces everywhere.

It was more than Goebbels
and Bormann could deliver.

Fighting in Berlin continued.

Later that evening, Goebbels
and his wife killed

their six children and then
committed suicide themselves.

That same night
Bormann disappeared.

Eventually in the 1990's,
DNA testing confirmed

that a body found
in Berlin was his.

The next morning
Berlin surrendered.

By mid afternoon all fighting
in the city had stopped.

Across the country the pace
of the German surrender

now gathered momentum.

The following day Doenitz
sent a delegation

to the British
commanding officer,

Field Marshal Montgomery.

He offered to surrender
all German forces

in northern Germany.

Montgomery sent a reply saying
he didn't have the authority

to accept a surrender on
behalf of the Americans

or the Russians.

He could only accept
the surrender

of those troops fighting him.

Doenitz had no choice but to
agree to Montgomery's terms.

But that left Germany
still fighting

in the rest of the country.

Doenitz now sent
another delegation

to General Eisenhower,

the supreme Allied commander,

to discuss a peace
deal with the west.

But it carefully
avoided any reference

to a surrender to the Russians.

Eisenhower rebuffed him and
insisted that only the

unconditional surrender of all
German forces was acceptable.

Once again Doenitz was
forced to back down.

At 2:41 in the morning
of May the 7th, 1945,

at Eisenhower's
headquarters in France,

General Alfred Jodl,
Hitler's Chief of Operations

throughout the six years of war

signed a document of
unconditional surrender.

Eisenhower's Chief of
Staff, Walter Bedell Smith,

signed for the western allies.

General Ivan Susloparov
signed for the Soviet Union.

The only member of
the Allies side

not happy with the
arrangement was Stalin.

The Soviet Union had suffered
too much to miss out

on its own humiliation
of the Germans.

So Stalin countermanded
Susloparov and declared

Russia would only accept
a surrender in Berlin.

It meant that the
following day Hitler's

former Chief of Staff, Field
Marshal Wilhelm Keitel,

signed a second surrender
document to satisfy Stalin.

Marshal Zhukov signed
for the Soviet Union,

with Air Chief Marshal
Sir Arthur Tedder

signing on behalf of
the western allies.

In January, 1943, the
late President Roosevelt

and Premier Churchill
met in Casablanca.

There they pronounced the
formula of unconditional

surrender for the Axis powers.

In Europe that formula
has now been fulfilled.

Across Europe and
the United States

crowds began to celebrate the
end of the war in Europe.

From now on, the day after
the German surrender,

May the 8th, would
be known as VE Day,

Victory in Europe.

But as the celebrations
continued,

many were aware of two
very sobering issues.

In the east, Japan
was still fighting.

And in Europe the
continent lay in ruins,

and huge problems
needed to be solved.

Millions of Germany's
concentration camp victims

and slave labourers would need
help to rebuild their lives.

Millions of captured German
fighting men had to be

screened before being
allowed to go home

to identify and arrest
major war criminals.

The SS was a particular target.

It had been responsible
for some of the

worst atrocities of the war.

Leading Nazis like
Hermann Goering,

head of Hitler's Air
Force, were rounded up

and paraded in front
of the cameras.

Other top Nazis arrested
included civilian leaders like

Albert Speer, and military
leaders like Yodl and Doenitz.

They would be put on trial in
the German city of Nuremberg

for crimes against humanity.

You must plead guilty
or not guilty.

Rudolph Hess, you must plead

guilty or not guilty.

Nein.

That will be entered as a plea

of not guilty.

The Nazi leadership
received sentences

ranging from the death penalty
to ten years in prison.

Goering committed suicide
before he could be hung.

Two months after the German
surrender, the Allies met

in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam.

Germany was divided into
four zones of occupation,

Soviet, British,
American and French.

Berlin, although deep
in the Soviet zone,

was parcelled up between the
Allies in the same way.

The peoples of Europe would
also find themselves divided.

Some would now live under the
control the western allies,

some under Communist Russia.

But before any of
this could be faced,

there was still the war
in the Pacific to be won.