Original subtitles

[THEME MUSIC]

ROD FOUST: With Poland wiped off the map,

Denmark occupied, and Norway conquered, Hitler now

turned all his powers as a strategist

and the full might of Germany against his enemies in the West.

Germany launched its offensive blow on the morning of 10

May 1940.

During the night, German motorized forces

occupied Luxembourg.

And in the morning, German Army Group B, led by General von

Bock, launched a feint offensive into the Netherlands

and Belgium.

German fallschirmjager or paratroopers from the Seventh

Pfleger and 22nd Luftlande Infanterie Division under Kurt

Student executed surprise landings at the Hague

on the road to Rotterdam and against

the Belgian Fort Eben-Emael.

The Allied command reacted immediately, sending forces

north to combat a plan that, for all the Allies knew,

resembled the earlier Schlieffen plan.

This move north committed their best forces

and diminished their fighting power

through loss of readiness and their mobility

through loss of fuel.

Outgunned and outflanked, the poorly equipped

Dutch Army surrendered on 14 May after the Germans

bombed Rotterdam.

The expected major tank battle took place in the Gembloux Gap

between the French second and third mechanized light division

and the German third and fourth Panzer divisions of Erich

Hoepner's 16th Panzer Corps.

The first major clash of armor cost

both sides about 100 vehicles.

The German offensive in Belgium seemed stalled for a moment,

but this was a feint.

Hitler, at last, unleashed the rapier thrust of his Panzers

into the gut of France.

German Army Group A smashed through the Belgian infantry

regiments and French light divisions,

advancing into the Ardennes, and arrived

at the Meuse River near Sedan on the night of 12 to 13 May.

On 13 May, the Germans forced three crossings near Sedan.

Instead of slowly massing artillery,

as the French expected, the Germans

replaced the need for traditional artillery

by using the full might of their bomber force

to punch a hole in a narrow sector of the French lines

by carpet bombing.

The combination of the psychological impact

of the bombing, deep penetrations by some small

German infantry units, and the lack of air

or artillery support eventually broke

down the 55th's resistance.

Much of the unit retreated in a route by the evening of 13 to 14

May.

On 14 May, every available Allied light bomber

was employed in an attempt to destroy

the German pontoon bridges.

But despite incurring the highest single day action losses

in the entire history of the British and French air forces,

they failed to destroy these targets.

French resistance began to crumble.

The commander of the French second army, General Huntziger,

immediately took effective measures

to prevent a further weakening of his position.

The Third Armored Division and a motorized infantry division

were positioned to block further German advances

around his flank.

However, the commander of 19 Panzer corps, Heinz Guderian,

wasn't interested in Huntziger's flank.

On 15 May, leaving the 10th Panzer Division

at the bridgehead to protect it from attacks by French third

DCR, he moved his 1st and 2nd Panzer Divisions sharply

to the west, undercutting the flank of the French Ninth Army

by 40 miles and forcing the 102nd fortress division

to leave its positions that had blocked

16 Panzer Corps at Monthermé.

While the French Second army had been seriously mauled

and had rendered itself impotent,

the Ninth Army began to disintegrate completely.

In Belgium, Allied divisions, not having the time to fortify,

had been pushed back from the river by the unrelenting

pressure of German infantry, allowing

the impetuous Erwin Rommel to break free

with his 7th Panzer Division.

On 15 May, a French Armored Division was sent to block him.

But his unexpected speedy advance caught the French tanks

refueling and dispersed it with minor damage to the 7th Panzer.

On 16 May, both Guderian and Rommel

disobeyed their explicit direct orders

to consolidate their positions and moved

their divisions many kilometers to the west

as fast as they could push them.

Guderian reached Marl 80 miles from Sedan.

Rommel crossed the River Sambre at Le Cateau, 100 miles

from his bridgehead, Dinan.

While nobody knew the whereabouts of Rommel--

he had advanced so quickly that he was out of range for radio

contact, earning his 7th Panzer Division the nickname Ghost

Division-- an enraged Von Kleist flew to Guderian on the morning

of 17 May and, after a heated argument,

relieved him of all duties.

However, Commander Von Rundstedt would have none of it

and refused to confirm the order.

On 16 May, Winston Churchill flew to Paris.

He immediately recognized the gravity of the situation

when he observed that the French government was already

burning its archives and preparing for an evacuation

of the capital.

In a somber meeting with the French commanders,

Churchill asked General Gamelin, "Where is

the strategic reserve?", which had saved

Paris in the First World War.

"There is none," Gamelin replied.

On 18 May, Rommel made the French give up Cambrai by merely

feinting an armored attack.

The next day, the Panzer Corps started moving again,

smashed through the weak British 18th and 23rd Territorial

Divisions, occupied Amiens, and secured the westernmost bridge

over the River Somme at Abbeville,

isolating the British French, Dutch, and Belgian

forces in the north.

In the evening of 20 May, a reconnaissance unit

from 2nd Panzer Division reached Noyelles, 100 miles to the west.

There, they could see the estuary of the Somme

flowing into the channel.

While the 1st Panzer Division was ready

to attack Dunkirk on 25 May, Hitler

ordered it to halt on 24 May.

This remains one of the most controversial

decisions of the entire war.

Hermann Goring had convinced Hitler the Luftwaffe

could prevent an evacuation.

Von Rundstedt had warned him that any further effort

by the armored divisions would lead to a much

prolonged refitting period.

Attacking cities wasn't part of the normal task

for armored units under any operational doctrine.

Encircled, the British Belgian, and French

launched Operation Dynamo and Operation Aerial on 26

May to evacuate Allied forces from the northern pocket

in Belgium and Pas de Calais.

On 29 May, 47,000 British troops were rescued in spite

of the first heavy air attack from

the Luftwaffe in the evening.

The next day, an additional 54,000 men were embarked,

including the first French soldiers.

A further 64,000 Allied soldiers departed on 1 June before

the increasing air attacks prevented

further daylight evacuations.

The British rear guard departed the night of 2 June along

with 60,000 French soldiers.

An additional 26,000 French troops were

retrieved the following night before

the operation finally ended.

Defeat was near.

The best and most modern French armies had been sent north

and lost in the resulting encirclement.

The French had lost much of their heavy weaponry and

their best armored formations.

Adding to this grave situation, Italy declared war on France

and Britain on 10 June.

The Germans renewed their offensive

on 5 June on the Somme.

An attack broke the scarce reserves

that Weygand had put between the Germans and the capital.

On 14 June, Paris fell to the Wehrmacht.

[TENSE MUSIC]

France formally surrendered to Hitler on 25 June

in the same railroad car at Compiegne

that Germany, in 1918, had been forced to surrender in.

[TENSE MUSIC]

[SOMBER MUSIC]

The Battle of France was over.

[SOMBER MUSIC]

[ENERGETIC MUSIC]

On 22 June 1941, Hitler took his greatest gamble.

"I decided today, again, to lay the fate and future

of the German Reich and our people

in the hands of our soldiers."

As he spoke, his armies were rolling across the plains

of Eastern Poland into Russia.

Hitler called the assault Operation Barbarossa

after the medieval German emperor Frederick I

who won spectacular victories against the infidel in the east.

In the invasion of Poland of 1939,

the two powers invaded and partitioned

the unfortunate state.

For nearly two years, the new border

between Russia and the Reich was quiet

while Hitler conquered Denmark, Norway, France, and the Balkans.

However, the fuhrer had always intended to renege on the pact

with the Soviet Union.

Lacking sufficient naval assets and a strategic bomber force,

Hitler was unable to force Britain's capitulation.

He was leaning toward an invasion of Britain,

yet was impatient to get on with his long desired

invasion of the East.

He was convinced that Britain would

sue for peace once the Soviet Union

was knocked out of the war.

In preparation for the attack, Hitler moved 3.2 million men

to the Soviet border, launched many aerial surveillance

missions over Soviet territory, and stockpiled vast amounts

of material in the East.

Hitler, the OKW or German high command,

and the various high commands were

in disagreement about a comprehensive plan

and what the main objectives should be.

OKW desired a straight line thrust to Moscow.

But Hitler wanted to take resource-rich

Ukraine and the Baltics before turning to Moscow.

The resulting squabble disrupted logistical planning

for the invasion.

This, combined with the German support of Italy

in the Balkans campaign, delayed the invasion

about a week beyond the originally planned date in May.

The strategy Hitler and his generals

ultimately agreed upon involved three separate army groups

assigned to capture specific regions and large cities

of the Soviet Union.

At 3:15 on 22 June 1941, 3 million German soldiers,

to be joined by their Italian, Romanian,

and other allies over the next weeks,

burst over the borders and stormed into the Soviet Union.

German Panzers massed at key crossing points,

broke across the frontier, and drove deep into the interior.

In the extreme South, the 11th Army of Romanians and Germans

attacked across the Prut River into Bessarabia,

winning it in a week, and then moving

on with all Romanian formations to besiege

Odessa along the Black Sea.

Hoepner's Army Group North, comprising the 16th and 18th

Armies and 4th Panzer Group, pushed out of East Prussia,

driving through Lithuania, Latvia,

Estonia, and the Russian cities of Pskov

and Novgorod toward Leningrad.

In Army Group Center, Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group plunged across

the Bug River at Brest-Litovsk.

And Hoth's 3rd Panzer Group drove out of East Prussia with

Minsk, 215 miles northeast of Brest,

as their initial objective.

As the Panzers moved eastward and enveloped both sides

of the Russian forces around Bialystok,

Field Marshal Bock ordered his infantry

fourth and ninth armies to encircle 12 Russian divisions

east of Bialystok.

On June 28, the 9th and 4th German Armies linked east

of Bialystok, splitting the encircled Soviet

forces into two pockets--

a larger Bialystok pocket containing the Soviet 10th Army

and a smaller Novogrudok pocket containing

the 3rd and 13th Armies.

On June 29, Minsk, the capital of Byelorussia,

fell to the Wehrmacht.

Ultimately, in 17 days, the Soviet

Western Front lost 420,000 personnel

from a total of 625,000.

The combined Panzer force reached

the Berezina River in just six days

400 miles from their start lines.

The next objective was to cross the Dnieper River, which

was accomplished by 11 July.

With the capture of Smolensk and the advance to the Luga River,

Army Groups Center and North had completed

their first major objective.

They had gotten across and now held the land bridge

between the Dvina and Dnieper.

The route to Moscow, only 250 miles away, was wide open.

Yet at this moment, Hitler turned the campaign

in a completely different direction.

He lost the one chance that he had

earned through the ferocious battles

to destroy the Soviet Union.

The German generals wanted an immediate drive toward Moscow,

but Hitler overruled them.

He cited the importance of Ukrainian grain

and heavy industry if they could be put under German possession.

He also noted the massing of Soviet reserves

in the Gomel area, which was between the Army

Group Center's southern flanks and the bogged

down Army Group South.

The order was issued to 2nd Panzer Group to turn

south and advance toward Kyiv.

This took the whole of August and into September.

But finally, when 2nd Panzer Group joined up with 1st Panzer

Group at Lokhvytsya on 14 September, 665,000

Soviet prisoners were taken.

Kyiv fell on 19 September.

Hitler then decided to resume the advance on Moscow.

For the second half of October, it

rained solidly, turning what few roads

there were into endless mud.

It trapped German vehicles, horses, and men alike.

With 100 miles still to go to Moscow,

there was worse to come when the temperature plunged

and snow started falling.

The vehicles could move again, but the men could not.

They were freezing with no winter clothing.

The German leadership had expected the campaign

to be over in a few months.

They had not equipped their armies for winter fighting.

The German soldiers were in their summer uniforms.

The German army, as a whole, had lost half

a million men since 22 June.

Almost no units were at full strength.

Many of the 600,000 horses the Germans had brought into Russia

to carry supplies were dead.

There were no replacements.

Ammunition had to be left on the sides of the roads.

The sick could not be left in the rear

because the forests behind the advancing armies

were infested with partisan guerrillas.

Shelter everywhere was inadequate or non-existent.

Boots fell apart, clothing turned into rags,

yet they moved on.

When the advance began again, German Panzers

broke the Russian front in five places.

Guderian drove northeast from Sosna to Orel, 80 miles south

of Moscow.

His advance was so rapid that the electric streetcars were

still running in the city and evacuations of factories

were underway as his tanks rolled in.

Workers abandoned machinery and tools in the streets.

The battles were turbulent.

Frequently, German troops were cut off

and had to fight their way free.

Russian aircraft bombed frequently but flew so

high their aim was inaccurate.

Counter strokes by T-34 and KV1 tanks led

to critical battle situations.

German tankers found that the short barreled 75-millimeter gun

on their Mark 4 could knock out a T-34

but only if it could hit the grating

above the engine in the rear.

This kind of shot was rarely possible.

The 480-mile wide battlefield was covered with fallen

soldiers, dead horses, shot-up tanks,

and the first American Jeeps.

The Jeeps were sent to Russia from America as part

of the Lend Lease Program.

On 13 October, resistance in the Vyazma cauldron ceased.

There were now very few Soviet soldiers

between the Germans and Moscow.

The entire Soviet army in European Russia had been reduced

to 600,000 men and 770 tanks.

Panic was setting in among the people.

Rumors of advancing Germans spread widely.

People began to fly from the city.

Marshal Georgy Zhukov stilled the panic

by mobilizing every person he could

find to build anti-tank ditches outside the city.

A quarter of a million people--

3/4 of them women-- did the work by hand with shovels,

spades, and buckets.

At a meeting held in Orsha between the head

of the German army general staff, General Halder,

and the heads of three army groups,

it was decided to push forward to Moscow.

This final offensive went down in the annals of the German army

as the die flucht nach vorn or the flight to the front.

It was the desperate attempt of the troops

to get into the shelters of Moscow

before the onset of winter.

The attempt began on November 15 in clear, frosty weather.

The Panzer units of the northern wing

gained a bridgehead across the canal at Dmitrov.

And one division came within 18 miles of Moscow

at Krasnaya Polyana.

Guderian went around toughly defended

Tula and approached Kashira, only 32 miles from Kolomna.

Members of the most forward German patrol

saw the towers of the Kremlin.

Then the German offensive stopped.

The reason was the onset of cruel weather.

This was coupled with the decision of Zhukov

to move the Russian armies to the offensive.

He was able to do this when reinforcements from the Far East

arrived in Moscow.

Temperatures sank to minus 20 degrees Celsius

and then fell farther.

The German army was not able to cope with such cold.

The number of frostbite cases rose to 228,000.

Tanks, machine weapons, and radios failed.

Boilers of locomotives burst.

An attempt by 4th Army to renew its attack broke down.

Over the next 14 days, the offensives in the north

and south also collapsed.

Stalemate was setting in.

German commander Bock doubted the value of pushing on

and asked OKH on 1 December to suspend the operation.

But Brauchitsch, who was desperately

afraid of Hitler's anger, insisted

that the attacks must continue.

The soldiers at the front pressed a few miles forward.

But on 5 December, Zhukov threw into the fight not only

the reinforcements from the Far East

but three new armies that had been

forming deep in the Russian hinterland East of the Volga.

The counteroffensive blow hit the worn-out German divisions

at the moment of their greatest weakness.

Guderian, attacked by what he called Siberians,

had to give up the positions he had won around Tula.

On 6 December, a Soviet penetration of four armies

spread in the direction of Klin, forcing

the Germans back from their closest approach to the capital.

South of Moscow, other Soviet forces

threatened to cut off Guderian's advanced forces around Kashira.

And he withdrew to the line of the upper Don River 60 miles

to the south.

Barbarossa had failed.

Hitler never saw that he made any mistake.

He blamed the defeat on the unexpectedly

early onset of severe winter.

Furious that his army had been unable to take Moscow,

Hitler dismissed his commander-in-chief,

Walther Von Brauchitsch, on 19 December 1941.

He took personal charge of the Wehrmacht,

effectively taking control of all military decisions.

Along with 30 other general officers,

three army commanders--

Maximilian Von Weichs of the 2nd,

Adolf Strauss of the 9th, and Carl-Heinrich

Von Stulpnagel of the 17th--

were also dismissed.

Hitler also expelled Hoepner from the army

for an unauthorized retreat.

Most significantly, he ousted Guderian.

Hitler had refused to listen to an attempt by Guderian on 20

December to explain the desperate situation

at the front.

So the best Panzer leader in the German army

went into the army officers reserve pool.

[PATRIOTIC MUSIC]

On 13 September 1940, the Italian 10th Army stationed

in Libya launched an ill-advised invasion

into British-held Egypt.

The Italian army was largely unmechanized.

And its commander, Marshal Rodolfo Graziani,

was opposed to the operation.

With the door to Cairo open, Graziani chose not to advance.

This gave the surprised British force time to recover.

The British forces were outnumbered by over five to one.

And only half of the British were combatants.

Nevertheless, General Sir Archibald Wavell

launched a counterattack.

It was far more successful than expected.

It resulted in the surrender of the entire Italian army.

The Allies were also able to advance to El Agheila.

The stunning defeat of the Italians

did not go unnoticed by Hitler.

To save his blundering ally, the fuhrer

sent the Deutsche Afrika Korps under Erwin Rommel

to reinforce them.

On 24 March 1941, Rommel, who had

been ordered to hold a defensive position, launched an offensive.

He bypassed Tobruk and reached the Egyptian border on 14 April.

There, the opposing British and German-Italian armies remained

stalemated until November 1941.

The British 8th Army used the summer and autumn

of 1941 to reorganize.

Taking advantage of the diversion

of German human and material resources from North Africa

to the eastern front in Europe, the British

attacked Rommel's positions in what was

known as Operation Crusader.

After early reverses, the British drove the Axis armies

back into Libya.

They relieved the garrison in Tobruk

and forced Rommel to pull all the way back to El

Agheila on 6 January, 1942.

The ability of the Germans to shift resources to North Africa

after stabilizing the eastern front in January 1942

and the diversion of British resources

to meet the Japanese threat in the Pacific after 7 December,

1941 enabled Rommel to launch a second offensive

on 21 January, 1942.

Axis troops reached Al Ghazala just west of Tobruk

within two weeks.

On 26 May, 1942, German and Italian troops

launched another offensive, Operation Venezia.

This enabled them to encircle Tobruk and drive Allied forces

back to the Egyptian border.

Tobruk fell on 21 June, and Rommel's forces

pursued the British into Egypt.

During the course of July 1942, the British halted

the Axis armies at El Alamein.

Despite the British success in stopping Rommel,

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill

replaced his top military commanders in the Middle East.

He appointed General Sir Harold Alexander as commander-in-chief

of British forces in the Middle East and Lieutenant

General Sir Bernard L. Montgomery

as commander of the 8th Army.

On 30 August, 1942, the Axis launched its final offensive

of the western desert campaign.

On 3 September, the British halted

the Axis units at the Battle of Alam el

Halfa just south of El Alamein.

After amassing troops and supplies,

including new US-supplied tanks, Montgomery

attacked Rommel's forces at El Alamein on 23 October, 1942.

10 days later, the Axis forces were forced to withdraw.

Hoping to preserve his fighting forces for combat

from a better strategic position,

Rommel retreated rapidly across Libya.

He abandoned the Libyan capital, Tripoli, on 23

January, 1943 and reached the Tunisian border a week later.

The Tunisian campaign began with an Allied

amphibious landing near Sfax in Eastern Tunisia on 5

January 1943.

On 4 February, 1943, the British Eighth army

crossed the border from Libya into Tunisia.

Squeezed between US and British Commonwealth forces

and cut off from his supply bases,

German General Erwin Rommel attempted to stall the Allies

with defensive operations.

Although German and Italian troops

managed to route the US II Corps at the Kasserine Pass on 18

February, the Axis forces were still vastly

outnumbered and outgunned.

The Allies made slow but steady progress

in forcing the Axis troops into a pocket along the north

central Tunisian coast.

On 7 May, 1943 the British 7th Armored Division captured Tunis,

the capital of Tunisia.

The US 2nd Army Corps captured Bizerte, the last

remaining port in Axis hands.

Six days later, on 13 May, 1943, the Axis forces in North Africa,

having sustained 40,000 casualties in Tunisia alone,

surrendered.

267,000 German and Italian soldiers

became prisoners of war.

The Allied victory in North Africa

destroyed or neutralized nearly 900,000

German and Italian troops.

After the narrow failure of Hitler's invasion of Russia

in 1941, the German army no longer

had the strength and resources for a renewed

offensive on a broad front.

But Hitler was unwilling to stay on the defensive

and consolidate his gains.

He searched for an offensive solution

that, with limited means, might promise more than a

limited result. He now concentrated

on the southern part of the front

with the aim of capturing the Caucasus

oil, which each side needed if it was

to maintain its full mobility.

The 1942 offensive was actually a greater gamble

than that of the previous year.

If it were to be checked, the long flank of this southerly

drive would be exposed to a counterstroke anywhere

along its 1,000-mile stretch.

Initially, the German blitzkrieg technique worked.

A swift breakthrough was made on the Kursk-Krakow sector.

And then General Ewald von Kleist's 1st Panzer Army swept

like a torrent along the corridor between

the Don and the Donets Rivers.

Surging across the lower Don, gateway to the Caucasus,

it gained the more westerly oil fields

around Maykop in six weeks.

The Russians' resistance had crumbled badly under the impact

of the blitzkrieg.

This was Russia's weakest hour.

Fortunately for Russia, Hitler split his effort

between the Caucasus and Stalingrad on the Volga, gateway

to the north and the Urals.

Moreover, when the first attacks on Stalingrad by Field Marshal

Friedrich Paulus' 6th Army were checked in mid-July,

although they were narrowly checked,

Hitler increasingly drained his forces

in the Caucasus to reinforce the divergent attack on Stalingrad.

This was the city of Stalin, so Hitler could

not bear to be defied by it.

Its resistance obsessed him.

Hitler wore down his army and the prolonged effort

to achieve its capture and lost sight

of his initial prime aim, the vital oil

supplies of the Caucasus.

The Russians' resistance at Stalingrad hardened.

The directness of the German attack

simplified the Russian command's problem in meeting the threat.

A realization of the risks led the German general staff

to tell Hitler in August that it would

be impossible to hold the line of the Don as a defensive flank

during the winter.

Hitler ignored the warning because of his obsession

with capturing Stalingrad.

The Russian defenders position in the city

came to look more and more imperiled, even desperate,

as the circle contracted and the Germans came closer

to the heart of the city.

The most critical moment was on 14 October.

The Russians now had their backs so close to the Volga

that they had no room to practice shock absorbing tactics

and sell ground to gain time.

But beneath the surface, basic factors

were working in their favor.

The German attackers' morale was being

sapped by their heavy losses and a growing sense of frustration.

They were becoming ripe for a counteroffensive

that the Russians were preparing to launch

against the German flanks, which were

held by Romanian and other Axis troops of poor quality.

The counteroffensive was launched on 19 November.

Wedges were driven into the flanks at several places

to isolate Paulus' 6th Army.

By the 23rd, the encirclement was complete.

More than a quarter of a million German and Axis troops

were cut off.

Hitler would permit no withdrawal,

and relief attempts in December were repulsed.

Even then, Hitler was reluctant to permit

the 6th Army to try to break out westward before it was too late.

Airdropped supplies had proved inadequate.

Hitler promoted Friedrich Paulus to general field marshal

on January 30, 1943, which was the 10th anniversary

of his coming to power.

Since no German field marshal had ever been taken prisoner,

Hitler assumed that Paulus would fight on or take his own life.

Short of ammunition and freezing in minus 30-degree temperatures,

Paulus and the bulk of what remained

of his exhausted and near starving

army surrendered on 31 January.

91,000 tired, ill, and starving Germans were taken captive.

Only 6,000 of the 91,000 German prisoners

of war survived their captivity and returned home.

[OMINOUS MUSIC]

The Soviet counter-offensive launched at Stalingrad

slowly threw back the Germans along the entire front,

from Leningrad to Sevastopol.

Hitler had once said, "The world will

hold its breath and fall silent when Barbarossa is mounted."

Now the scales of war were against Hitler.

In the summer of 1943, the Germans

met with a devastating defeat in Russia at the Battle of Kursk.

The German and Italian armies in Africa were destroyed.

1944 found Germany totally on the defensive

with the successful Allied invasion of France

and repeated losses in Russia.

By the beginning of 1945, the British, Americans,

and Russians were closing in on Germany.

The Russians, by the end of January,

were within 100 miles of Berlin.

By April 1, 1945, the Russians were outside Berlin.

They built up for two weeks, knowing that Berlin

would be heavily contested.

The Western Allies plan to drop paratroops to take Berlin

but decided against it.

Eisenhower saw no need to suffer casualties taking a city that

would be in the Soviet sphere of influence once the war was over.

The Battle of Berlin would be the deciding conflict

between Nazism and communism.

The offensive began with thousands of artillery

shells and rockets.

The rockets were called Stalin organs because of their hideous

shrieking noise.

This opened a huge sustained barrage that lasted for days.

On 16 April, the first and second Belarusian

fronts and the first Ukrainian front

boxed in Berlin from the east.

The next day, the 5th Guard Tank Army

linked with the US 1st Army at Torgau,

Germany on the Elbe River.

On 22 April, at his afternoon situation conference,

Hitler fell into a tearful rage.

He realized that his plans of a massive counter-offensive

from the day before were not going to happen.

He declared that the war was lost.

Blaming his generals, he announced that he would

stay in Berlin until the end.

He would then kill himself before being captured.

In an attempt to coax Hitler out of his rage,

General Alfred Jodl speculated that the 12th Army,

which was facing the Americans, could move to Berlin.

This was because the Americans already on the Elbe

River were unlikely to move further east.

Hitler immediately grasped the idea.

Within hours, General Walther Wenck was ordered to disengage

the Americans and move the 12th Army

northeast to support Berlin.

The German high command then realized that

if the 4th Army moved west, it could

link up with the 12th Army.

In the evening, General Gotthard Heinrici,

with the 12th Army, was given permission to make the link up.

Away from the map room in the Berlin fuhrerbunker,

with its imaginary attacks of phantom divisions,

the Soviets were getting on with winning the war.

They had established a bridgehead on the east bank

of the Oder over 10 miles deep and were heavily engaged

with the 3rd Panzer Army.

The 9th Army had lost Cottbus and was

being pressed from the east.

A Soviet tank spearhead was on the Havel River

to the east of Berlin.

And another had, at one point, penetrated the

inner defensive ring of Berlin.

By 24 April, the three Soviet army groups had completed

the encirclement of the city.

Berlin's fate was sealed, but the resistance continued.

The Soviet advance to the city center

was along these main axes--

from the southeast along the Frankfurter Allee

and ending at the Alexanderplatz,

from the south along Sonnenallee ending north

of the Belle-Alliance plots, also from the south ending

near the Potsdamer Platz, and from the north

ending near the Reichstag.

The Reichstag, the Moltke Bridge, Alexanderplatz,

and the Havel bridges at Spandau were the places

where the fighting was heaviest with house to house and hand

to hand combat.

On 30 April, as the Soviet forces fought their way

into the center of Berlin, Adolf Hitler married Eva Braun

and then committed suicide.

[SOMBER MUSIC]

General Weidling, defense commandant of Berlin,

ordered the surrender of German defenders to the Soviets

on 2 May.

Despite this, heavy fighting continued in the city.

Large numbers of the Germans did not wish to surrender.

It was not until 8 May when the last German troops

finally surrendered.

The army that conquered Europe was no more.

[DRAMATIC MUSIC]