All language subtitles for [English (auto-generated)] The Full History of World War Two _ On the Edge of the Abyss [DownSub.com]

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territori. We shall fight on the

beaches. We should fight on the landing

grounds. We shall fight in the fields

and in the streets. We shall fight in

the hills. We shall never surrender.

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The United States of America was

suddenly and deliberately attacked by

naval and air forces of the Empire of

Japan. We will gain the inevitable

triumph. So help us God.

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as she is turned to the home.

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The Nazi entered this war under a rather

childish delusion that they were going

to bomb everybody else and nobody was

going to bomb them.

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sing Berlin. The 1st of May

1939, model national socialist companies

are awarded gold flags and publicly

fated for their services to the nation

and

regime. Among them is aircraft

manufacturer Zeil Flutove in Halle

Andes. Around 6 years after seizing

power, the national socialists seem to

have established almost total control

over German society.

As a totalitarian ideology, national

socialism seeks to penetrate and control

every area of life. Nazi institutions

are created with the aim of governing

people's lives from cradle to grave.

The National Socialists knew they didn't

have the support of the entire nation

and they needed that support to achieve

their

goals. At the new Reich Chancellor on

Vilhamasa in the center of Berlin, Adolf

Hitler makes only rare appearances these

days.

He spends much of the summer at his

mountain court, his retreat at Oba

Zaltzburg. In the company of close

allies, the dictator crafts his plans to

dominate the

continent. The national socialists see

themselves as fighting for the revision

of the Treaty of Versailles and the

restoration of German national

greatness. But there are racial and

territorial conditions. They believe

Germany is entitled to colonize lands in

the east and they believe in the

superiority of the Aryan race. Hitler

set that out in mine camp claiming that

the racially superior German nation

ultimately had a right to dominate

inferior less cultured groups

particularly in Eastern Europe and the

Soviet Union.

But it is still too early for a

confrontation with the Soviet Union. The

first stage of Third Reich expansion is

planned elsewhere. After the annexation

of Austria and the breakup of

Czechoslovakia, the dictator switches

his focus to Poland.

Hitler actually saw Poland as a junior

partner for his war against the Soviet

Union. That's why he signed a

non-aggression pact with Poland in the

early 1930s.

But it soon became clear that Poland

planned to pursue its own policies and

had no intention of being Hitler's

acquiescent friend and helper. So Hitler

tears up the non-aggression pact and

demands that Danig be incorporated into

the German

rush. Danzig looks back on a turbulent

history between Poland and Germany.

Unlike East Prussia, it was separated

from the German Reich under the Treaty

of Versailles and placed under the

authority of the League of

Nations. Most of Danzig's population are

German, and many are reluctant to accept

the city's new

fate. So are the National Socialists who

skillfully exploit the situation for

their own

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ends. And that played right into their

hands of course because they could

always say 99% of the population are

German. Why can't they be part of the

rash? The Nazis had been presented with

an open goal and their propaganda

machine sent the ball zinging into the

net.

Propaganda Minister Ysef Gerbles makes

several trips to the historic Hansiatic

city and delivers inflammatory speeches

to cheering crowds.

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But Hitler would never have been content

with just Dansancy. And he says that

quite clearly on several occasions. He

tells the chiefs of the armed forces so

in briefings ahead of the Polish

campaign. It is no longer just about

Dani. It is about a great deal more than

that. Dansi is just a symbol of the

sense of entitlement to Polish

territory. of Polish

territorials knows full well at this

time that war on Poland has long been a

certainty. His appearances in Danzig are

just part of the game. Back in May 1939,

Hitler told army chiefs that the

decision had been taken to attack Poland

at the earliest opportunity. The

dictator's words were recorded by his

agitant in chief Rudolfph Schmut. The

Fura issues the order to prepare for an

early

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invasion. But in public, the regime

insists it wants peace and denounces

Poland as the aggressor. In newspapers

and news reels, reports of assaults on

the German minority in Poland are

systematically

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exaggerated.

for. You have to present a convincing

level of distress so that the long

planned military intervention that is

being prepared and has been since at

least May 1939 can be credibly presented

as an act of national defense and that

calls for agitation, propaganda, reports

of alleged Polish atrocities against

German civilians.

Matrial.

The tension between the two countries

escalates. Poland launches a program to

modernize its army which stages a public

demonstration of strength under the eyes

of commanderin-chief Marshall

Ridzme. The parade is presented in Nazi

propaganda as a sign of expansionist

intent.

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The German Reich holds maneuvers on its

eastern border. Among those taking part

is the Sixth Tank Regiment, a part of

the newly formed Third Tank Division. On

the 20th of August 1939, the units head

east.

One of the officers has a camera and

films the operation.

In summer 1939, it is already clear that

war is imminent, that Hitler once

war, and that the maneuvers on the

eastern border are being held for

precisely that

reason. They give troops a chance to

acclimatize and hone their skills.

The Sixth Tank Regiment arrives in

Ratsibua near Chetchin, a strategically

favorable location for a strike. But the

time is not yet ripe. Hitler has a

problem. He doesn't know how his arch

enemy, the Soviet Union, will react to a

German attack on Poland. He fears that

Stalin might side with the Western

powers against

him. On the 23rd of August, Foreign

Minister Yakim von Ripentrop flies to

Moscow in Hitler's personal plane. In

the Russian capital, he surprises the

world by signing a non-aggression pack

with his opposition number Vaklav

Molotov. Ysef Stalin is delighted with

the agreement.

The really interesting thing about the

Hitler Stalin pact is the secret

protocol included in it. It defines

spheres of influence in the event of

action being taken against Poland.

Basically speaking, Germany gets the

western territories and the Soviet Union

the eastern ones, notably Eastern

Galysia.

Hitler is well aware of the treaty's

huge strategic importance. On the

evening of the 23rd of August, he and

his inner circle wait impatiently at

Behov for news from Moscow. The message

that the treaty has been signed does not

arrive till after midnight.

The pact paves the way for Hitler to go

to war. Nationwide, there are growing

signs that armed conflict is imminent.

One clear indication is the issue of

ration cards. The sale of certain

commodities such as fat was already

controlled. Now there is general food

rationing.

The moment war breaks out, the first

priority is to supply soldiers at the

front. So the laws of the market are

basically suspended by issuing ration

cards. Even if people have money, they

cannot get food for cash. They have to

show

entitlement. And that system of

entitlement is the real crux of

rationing. It gives the state systematic

control over consumption.

People prepare for the anticipated food

shortages. The older generation still

remember the hunger endured during the

First World War. Provisions are

stockpiled just in case.

The news reels present footage of men

reporting for military service.

But unlike in 1914, there is little

enthusiasm for the impending conflict in

the late summer of

39. The German intelligence services

note that the public mood is

somber. People know what happens when a

great war is waged on the western

powers.

They know it brings death, suffering,

and

deprivation. And for the majority of

Germans in 1939, that is a ghastly

prospect. Regardless of the public mood,

the German Reich flexes its muscles.

There's a demonstrative naval presence

in the Baltic. After the loss of much of

the high seas fleet in the First World

War, the country has redoubled its

rearmament effort since the mid 1930s.

The fleet includes SMS Holstein which

calls at Dansig on the 25th of

September. A propaganda film shows the

reception.

Marina.

On the afternoon of the 25th of August,

Hitler gives the order for the assault

on Poland to commence the next day. But

only hours later, the order is revoked

when it is learned that Britain has

signed a mutual assistance pact with

Poland. And the Italian dictator

Mussolini says his country is not yet

ready to go to war.

In the days that follow, diplomats try

to save the peace. Among them, the UK

ambassador in Berlin, Neville Henderson.

Hitler makes a half-hearted show of

engaging with attempts at mediation, but

his mind is made up. The spectre of war

casts a shadow over

Europe. At the end of August 1939,

Poland's ally France mobilizes for war,

building a fighting force of around 90

divisions. And despite diplomatic

endeavors, preparations for a conflict

with Germany are also made in

London. The Anglo Polish mutual

assistance pact will kick in if either

of the two nations is attacked. So

Hitler looks for a way to present Poland

as the

aggressor. He says, "I will provide a

propagandistic Kazosbi. Its credibility

doesn't matter. The victor will not be

asked whether he told the truth.

Hitler orders a series of false flag

operations, faking Polish attacks on

Germany. One of the best known is the

Gllyz incident where a German radio

station is attacked by SS operatives in

Polish army uniform.

Shortly after 8:00 p.m. on the 31st of

August, the SS group breaks into the

radio station

Antanovitzerasa in Glitz. Posing as

anti-German saboturs, the men broadcast

a communicate in Polish. To make the

assault more credible, they leave behind

the body of Clesian farmer France Hunok,

who had been abducted and murdered the

previous day. The operation lasts only

minutes, but it gives Hitler the excuse

he seeks to issue the order to attack.

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The whole charade was staged to persuade

the international public and especially

the Germans that this was war in

self-defense, that Germany was the

victim, not the

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aggressor. More than 55 German divisions

stand ready to invade Poland. Among them

is the sixth tank regiment which moves

into strike position on the 31st of

August and awaits further

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orders. Recent arrival Schlesvig

Holstein is still at anchor in Danik

port. She's been assigned a special role

in the attack on Poland. At around4 to 5

in the morning, German radio broadcasts

this message.

against the Vesta Plata Peninsula is the

site of Polish munitions dumps which now

come under fire from the sea. World War

II has started and a radio reporter

gives people in Germany a blowby-blow

account.

Positioned a couple of hundred meters

from the Schlesvvic Holstein and around

a kilometer from Veester Plat. He

describes with growing excitement the

hail of shells falling on Polish soil.

Minutes earlier the German Luftwafa had

appeared without warning and bombed the

Polish town of Villun east of Brelau.

Wave after wave of planes reduced the

town center to dust and ashes. The

demonstration of German air power claims

more than a thousand lives. And shortly

afterwards, German dive bombers join the

battle for Dansik.

Another direct

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hit. While the naval shelling and aerial

bombardment continue, the German army

advances. A force of more than a million

and a half men and over 3,000 tanks

enters Poland in a multi-pronged

invasion. In September 1939, Poland was

very exposed, geographically isolated.

It was hammed on three sides by East

Prussia, Salicia, and Slovakia, where

German troops were also stationed.

Another problem was that Poland's

leaders were determined not to give an

inch of ground. So, they could perhaps

have chosen better defensive positions.

As it was, the German troops overran the

Polish front line very quickly.

Within hours, Hitler speaks to the

German nation and announces the outbreak

of what he calls the defensive war.

get to office. In Danig, the fighting

spreads to the city center. In the early

hours of the 1st of September, Polish

personnel hole up in the Polish post

office

building. They have access to a cache of

weapons stored away in anticipation of a

German attack. Several attempts to take

the building are successfully repelled,

but late in the afternoon, German

engineers blast a hole in the facade.

Petrol is then pumped into the basement

and the buildings set on fire. The

situation becomes increasingly hopeless

for the defenders and they surrender.

Some are shot on the spot. Most of the

others are later executed. War shows its

brutal face from the very beginning.

The Var soldiers did not need to be

persuaded to go to war against Poland.

what with the consequences of the first

world war, the status of dans and so on,

German perceptions of Poland were very

negative. There was no appetite for a

major war against Britain or France, but

there was no objection to taking up arms

against Poland.

In the evening of the 1st of September,

less than 24 hours after the outbreak of

hostilities, Danzig is declared German

again. The Vmach enter the city amid

cheering crowds while the fighting on

Vesta Plata

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continues. In Berlin, Hitler appears

before a tame rashtag and defends the

military action. Britain and France

issue an ultimatum for Germany to

withdraw its troops from Poland, but the

Fura brushes off their demands. On the

3rd of September, the two powers declare

war on the German Reich.

Hitler was horrified because he hadn't

really expected Britain to stick to the

common defense pact with Poland. He

always dreamt right up to

1945 of standing alongside this global

power, the British

Empire. British.

He would create a pangeric empire on the

continent and the two of them would rule

the world together.

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British expeditionary forces embark for

France from Gernzi in the English

Channel. As in the First World War,

troops are deployed to help Allied

French forces meet an anticipated German

attack. The German Reich risks fighting

a war on two fronts.

Poland in the east has now been joined

by an enemy on Germany's western border,

France. The response is

immediate. Border villages are evacuated

to give the Vey room to operate. German

army units take up positions along the

frontier, but they initially find they

have little to do.

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Britain and France do not attack. Why

not? They are easily the more powerful

force. Most of Germany's troops are in

the east in Poland. But French military

doctrine says that success is best

sought in defense, not attack. First let

enemies advance, then attack when they

are weakened. And that's the lesson the

French learned from the First World War.

And they think it will work again. Now

the waiting game that follows is known

in Germany as the Zitzkig, the sitting

war. The French know it as the dul dea,

the funny or strange war. Apart from a

few propaganda exercises, the German

armed forces remain passive and despite

having declared war on the German Reich,

Britain and France also take little

military action.

They are simply not willing to engage in

ground warfare for a little country like

Poland. There's a move towards borders

to the peripheries. But there is no

desire as yet to intervene in central

Europe.

The German veh can thus focus on the

campaign in the east. Both army group

north under field marshal Fedor Fonbok

and Army Group South under Field Marshal

Gonet rapidly make major territorial

gains. Tactics play an important role.

Of all the armed forces in the Second

World War, the Viamat proves most adept

at launching combined arms operations,

especially in the early stages of the

war.

That means coordinating service branches

so that they mesh and work together like

teeth in a

gearbox. A key role is played by aerial

reconnaissance which is generally

performed by Dornier 17s and Henchel

126s. The crews take photographs which

are then minutely analyzed on the

ground. A propaganda film documents

their work.

Fore! Foreign! Foreign!

The advancing German armies leave behind

a trail of devastation. On the 3rd of

September, a soldier in the 14th Army

notes in his diary, "The roots of the

advancing divisions are easy to

identify. On our way to the front, we

pass endless streams of civilians and

burning homes. The fields near the road

are littered with the bizarrely twisted

corpses of Polish civilians. We all

look, but few grimace. Everyone just

thinks it's

war. For many of the inexperienced

German soldiers, the distinction between

civilians and partisans becomes blurred.

In the campaign against Poland, German

abuses, German crimes are committed at a

very early stage. In the VMAR, it's

primarily because soldiers are nervous

and inexperienced and fear an ambush at

every turn. They are quick to overreact.

They set whole villages on fire and they

kill hostages.

We don't know whether there really was

some kind of guerilla war in Poland, but

the Vermach certainly came to believe

they were caught up in one. Then they

started shooting at anything that moved.

Apart from these acts of violence, there

is early evidence of ideologically

motivated crimes against Polish

civilians.

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It is a war of annihilation from the

outset. A war aimed at the absolute

decimation of the Polish nation. Enins

SS death squads are operating behind the

Vermach lines and the result is the

murder of at least 60,000 civilians,

politicians, clerics and academics, many

of them members of the Jewish faith.

At the outbreak of the Second World War,

Jews make up around 10% of the Polish

population. Before long, that minority

becomes a focus for the Anzatkup and a

victim of excessive violence. National

Socialist propaganda has demonized Jews

for years and seeks to stir up hostility

even more. Propaganda films and news

reels become vehicles for incitement

campaigns specifically targeting

Jews.

mention

bank

fiveen with a total of around 3,000 men

were initially formed for the Polish

campaign. While they commit murder

behind the front line, the German armed

forces press on with their advance. On

the 6th of September, the 10th Army

significantly breaches the Polish

defenses. The Polish high command orders

its troops to retreat behind the San B,

and Vicel rivers. The same day, German

units take numerous cities in the south

of Poland, including Tarnau. The ground

force benefits from a new form of

support from the air.

Back in the first world war, the air

arms primary function was

reconnaissance. Now planes are used to

provide tactical support for troops on

the ground. A new idea that is embraced

only by the German Viamat in the early

war

years. In the invasion of Poland, the

Vey deploys two airfleets with over 1100

aircraft. Particularly feared are the

Stookas, the German dive bombers. As

they dive, they make a screaming sound

that terrifies and undermines

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morale. stand bomb.

Each stuka can carry a payload of 1,800

kilos and it's feared by soldiers and

civilians

alike. On the home front, the military

successes in the early days of the war

are followed with keen interest.

Newspapers put out special issues

reporting on developments at the front

line. But no one can expect the truth

here. The press has been under national

socialist control for

years. The same goes for radio. But

despite censorship, the dark side of the

war quickly becomes

apparent. Train loads of casualties

arrive from the front line. Military

hospitals and infirmaries spring up all

over the country. Here, a converted

school at Kabach in Hessa. An amateur

filmmaker records the busy hospital at

work and the surgery that is

performed. By the end of the Polish

campaign, around 30,000 German soldiers

have been wounded and some 15,000 have

lost their

lives. Before long, scenes like this are

an everyday sight in Germany. 21 years

after the end of the First World War,

fallen soldiers are again laid to

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rest. In the early days of the war, when

soldiers killed in action are still

returned home for burial, the regime

stage manages the funerals as tributes

to heroes.

The entire family of the deceased are

showcased to put across the message that

if something bad like this happens, it

is a life sacrificed for the regime and

the regime will not forget the

family. The Nazi propaganda machine

prefers to present other images. Since

the war started, Adolf Hitler has paid

regular visits to troops in the field,

and he makes sure they are filmed. Here,

the supreme commander of the armed

forces salutes German units crossing the

river's son.

Hitler likes to be seen with the troops

during the Polish campaign. He does so

primarily for propaganda reasons, of

course, to show Germans that their fur

and chancellor is now also a soldier. He

knows what it's like. He knows from the

first world war what it's like to be a

simple serviceman on the front line. And

for the troops, the message is he is

with you. The attention is to boost

morale of course and strengthen the bond

between members of the armed forces and

their fur and supreme commander.

The Betsura River near Kutnau in central

Poland. Undetected by German

reconnaissance, parts of the Polish

Pomorte and Posnan armies join forces

here and confront the advancing

Germans. For a while, the German 8th

army under General Blasco finds itself

hardpressed by the Polish offensive. But

with the help of parts of the fourth and

10th armies, the Polish forces are

ultimately surrounded. On the 19th of

September, the battle is won.

Around 170,000 Polish soldiers become

German prisoners of war and thus face an

uncertain future.

Crimes against the civilian population

and against prisoners of war are

documented from a fairly early stage in

the Polish campaign. I think ideology

certainly played a part, but there is

also what you might call a cultural

divide. As in the First World War, Poles

are seen as culturally inferior. It's a

fairly old perception with the potential

to arouse and unleash

violence. And above all, the Nazi regime

and Viamat institutions do nothing to

curb that violence.

What is more, the Vey cannot cope from

the outset with the large number of

prisoners. On the 8th of September, the

7th Army Corps of Army Group South

reports that conditions behind the

rapidly advancing ground force are

appalling. More than 6,000 prisoners and

internes are entirely without food and

virtually unguarded. A total of 400,000

Polish soldiers fall into German

captivity during the campaign. Many of

them are later deported and forced into

slave

labor. On the 17th of September, the

Polish armed forces suffer another heavy

blow. The Red Army invades from the

east.

When the Red Army crosses the border on

the 17th of September, it's effectively

game over for Poland. The country cannot

possibly win a war on two fronts. There

might have been a chance of staying off

defeat if there was only one front, but

even that would have been difficult. And

the events of the 17th of September can

mean only one thing. It's every man for

himself.

In the protocol to the Hitler Stalin

pact, the Third Reich and the Soviet

Union divided up Poland between them and

defined the Bou River as a demarcation

line. Within days of the Red Army

entering Poland, the invaders meet at

Breast Letosk and mark their success

with a celebratory joint military

parade. Less than 2 years later, Vamacht

and Red Army troops will meet again, but

as enemies after Germany invades the

Soviet Union in June

1941. The outcome of the war in Poland

has been decided, but the fighting is

not yet over. Military action is now

focused on the battle for the capital.

Warsaw has been surrounded since the

13th of September, but German troops

have so far failed to take the city.

American filmmaker Julian Bryan is one

of the last foreign journalists present

in Warsaw in September. His camera

records the people's desperate attempts

to protect their city.

[Music]

The Germans start to wonder if they'll

surrender. A short, sharp offensive

fails. Before long, German tanks are

outside Warsaw, but they are kept at bay

by the Poles. The question now is how

can the Poles be made to surrender?

The Luftvatha provides the answer. On

the 25th of September, more than 1,500

missions are flown over Warsaw. Over 500

tons of high explosive and dozens of

tons of incendurary bombs are dropped by

wave after wave of aircraft.

Operation Vaser Kante waterfront is

based on a plan of attack developed by

the Luftvafa before the

war. It is eminently important for the

end of the war because the German army

does not relish the prospect of a long

house-to-house fight for Warsaw. Vasaka

enables it to break the defender spirit,

but it also means the civilian

population suffers. alcohol. Large parts

of the city are raised to the ground. No

distinction is made between civilian and

military targets. Julian Brian films the

devastation at a hospital that fell

victim to the bombing. The nursery ward

was evacuated in time. Other people in

the city were not so lucky. More than

25,000 people are killed. A propaganda

film presents the Nazi version of events

blaming the Poles for the Inferno. They

should have surrendered the city

earlier. The commanderin-chief of the

Luftvatha, Herman Guring, boasts about

the airarms achievement.

Two months later, the top brass of the

Luftvafa deliver a triumphant report on

the bombardment.

They speak in particularly glowing terms

about the incendurary bomb B1 FE. The

resounding success of the Warsaw

operation removes any doubt about its

outstanding efficacy in residential

areas. They say it was dropped in large

quantities to maximize the number of

fires and interspersed with waves of

high explosive and shrapnel bombs to

keep the population in shelters so that

fires can spread to catastrophic levels.

Only a few years later, the same

strategy will be used against German

cities. Allied bombers will fly similar

missions, fully aware that tens of

thousands of civilians will perish.

[Music]

Blanket bombing always targets

civilians. The point is that this is the

first time it was used in the Second

World War.

It's also perhaps important to note that

it was not the British or Americans who

ordered the first bombing raid. The

first blanket bombing was carried out by

the German Luftvafa.

In theory, the German bombardment may

have been compliant with the Hague land

warfare convention. Warsaw was a

defended city in a combat zone with

substantial fortifications. In effect,

the assault was a terror attack. Within

hours, the city commander announces

Warsaw's unconditional

surrender. 120,000 soldiers in the city

are now taken into German captivity.

Every moment captured on film by a Nazi

propaganda team.

Quoting a poem about Napoleon's ultimate

defeat, the narrator stresses the scale

of the Polish capitulation.

The Polish defense now collapses

nationwide. The commander and chief of

the armed forces, Marshall Ridzme, flees

to Romania, following the footsteps of

the government, which did the same in

the middle of

September. Sporadic fighting continues

through to the 6th of October, but then

all resistance ceases. 36 days after the

invasion, the campaign is over. An

average of around

1,940 Polish soldiers a day have been

killed since the 1st of

September. The final death toll is at

least 70,000 and the list of wounded

runs to 130,000. Apart from that,

thousands of civilians have been

murdered.

[Music]

The brutalization of war is seen clearly

in the invasion of Poland and I think it

is a very significant development one

that has rightly been highlighted by

research in recent years. We see here

the suspension of inhibitions against

violence also on the part of the

military and individual soldiers which

will be a hallmark of the subsequent war

with the Soviet Union.

The day before the last Polish unit's

surrender, the Vach holds a victory

parade in Warsaw in the presence of its

Supreme

[Music]

Commander. The dictator enjoys the

moment of triumph, but he is already

making new plans for

war. What Hitler really wants to do

after the Polish campaign is immediately

launch a strike against France. But the

army and its commanderin-chief, Ala

Fonraich, persuade him, "The time is not

right. Winter is coming. We have no more

bombs and we have no more fuel." Hitler

has no real idea what a desperate state

the armed forces are

in. Victory in the Polish campaign masks

the veh's problems, which have become

increasingly acute in recent weeks.

[Music]

The ranks of the vehell from 100,000 men

in 1933 to 2.6 million in 1939. That's a

40fold increase in manpower within a few

years. And it can only be achieved, of

course, by significantly lowering

recruitment standards. The Viamat has

endless problems in Poland. Advances and

shelling in the wrong direction. action

taken without consultation. It is a

poorly prepared fighting force with

significant shortcomings and massive

problems and it is only victorious in

Poland because the chaos is even greater

on the Polish

side. Tactical errors aside, the Vmach

has major supply problems. It is a far

cry from the super army presented in the

news reels.

Even this fairly brief military campaign

against Poland pushes the arms industry

to its

limits. Internal communications in

winter 3940 speak of amunitions crisis.

It's an extraordinary situation. Parts

of the Viamat don't have enough grenades

or ammunition. There's a shortage of

bombs and there are supply problems.

The dictator responds to the crisis. At

Hitler's instigation, a ministry for

armaments and munitions is created and

engineer Fritz Tat is appointed to head

it. He had previously made a name for

himself developing the autobond network.

An important solution to the munitions

crisis is found again with Hitler's

intervention by defining the areas on

which armament should focus in the

future. They are air armament that is

aircraft construction and the

manufacturer of

ammunition. These are the two areas

defined as crucial to the war effort.

[Music]

Just days after the Polish surrender,

headlines are dominated by a feat of

naval warfare. On the 17th of October,

the submarine U47 under the command of

Ga Pin enters the port of Keel after a

successful patrol. It has just attacked

the British naval base at Scappa

Flow. In October

1939, when there's nothing newsworthy

happening on the front lines, a German

yubot commander, GA manages to penetrate

the Scappa Flow defenses and sink an old

British battleship, Royal Oak. British

Royal Oak.

The bay in the far north of Scotland is

the main base of the British naval fleet

and a place with special significance

for the German

Navy. After the first world war, the

German high seas fleet was interned in

Scaplow and in 1919 was scuttled on the

orders of its own commander. Two decades

later, Nazi propaganda goes into

overdrive over the yubot captain's

achievement. He is the propaganda

machine's dream.

[Music]

Nazi propaganda teams are always on the

lookout for personal stories and images.

An infantry man crouching in a trench is

not a story I can tell. But I can tell

stories about achievers. So submariners

are hailed as heroes by the propaganda

machine. They tick all the boxes. They

are young and dynamic. They are valiant

fighters. Unlike the gray ranks of the

army and infantry, they are perfect for

inspiring the

young. Footage like this boosts the

number of volunteers for submarine

service. Yubot crews see themselves as a

naval elite, but the majority of the men

will pay for their delusion with their

lives. Around 3/arters of all servicemen

assigned to German yubot do not live to

see the end of the

war in Poland. After the military

campaign is over, millions of people

lose their homes. As early as the

beginning of October, Hitler announced

in the gaag that hundreds of thousands

of ethnic Germans would be resettled in

the west of Poland and the ethnographic

situation adjusted. The resettlement

areas are cleared. existing communities

brutally expelled. The Polish state is

erased from the map.

The Germans primary objective is to

regain the eastern territories that had

to be seated under the Treaty of

Versailles and swiftly reinccorporate

them into Germany. This results in the

establishment of two new administrative

subdivisions, Dansi West Prussia and

Vatigo around Posnan. A few smaller

areas are also assigned to East Prussia

and East upper

Slesia, but the bulk of Polish territory

forms a separate zone known as the

general governoritate. From the outset,

this is intended as a place to deport

undesirabs.

On the 26th of October 1939, Hansf Frank

is appointed governor general. A lawyer

by profession and a convinced national

socialist, he takes up office in Vavl

Castle in Kako, once a residence of

Polish

kings. From the moment he is appointed,

Frank pursues a brutal policy of

exploitation against the population of

the general governor.

One of the factors at play here was a

national

self-image. We are the new master race

and what we say here

goes. You are our slaves and you are

here to work for us to grow food for the

German apart from that you are good for

nothing. There is no thought of

providing security for the civilian

population. The purpose of

administration and government is to

extract the most from the polls and

secure German

authority. Civilian suffering is

accepted from the start. If the food

situation is bad, if the harvest is

poor, let them starve. That is more or

less the attitude. Then there is the

extremely brutal treatment of the Polish

Jews in the general governorit. And

there are around 2 million of them.

In the early weeks of the war, thousands

of Jews were murdered by SS death

squads. Now ghettos are created in many

Polish cities, their inhabitants

overcrowded and exploited. For many,

life in these ghettos is the first phase

of a harrowing ordeal, one that ends in

millions of deaths.

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

territori. We shall fight on the

beaches. We shall fight on the landing

grounds. We shall fight in the fields

and in the streets. We shall fight in

the hills. We shall never surrender.

[Music]

[Music]

The United States of America was

suddenly and deliberately attacked by

naval and air forces of the Empire of

Japan. We will gain the inevitable

triumph. So help us God.

[Applause]

[Music]

[Music]

[Applause]

holiday. The Nazis entered this war

under the rather childish delusion that

they were going to bomb everybody else

and nobody was going to bomb them.

[Music]

sing.

[Music]

[Music]

the Hansiatic city of Corbach, an

important railroad hub in the north of

Hessa. About 6 months after the outbreak

of the Second World War, the residents

publicly demonstrated their support for

the Vmach. In March of 1940, they

gathered for a dinner of stew in the

streets. After the swift victory over

Poland in the fall of the previous year,

weapons had been silent on all fronts

for months, but the war remained present

in everyday life. The aim of the event

was to encourage the saving of resources

and to convey another message on behalf

of the regime. Whether soldier or

civilian, everyone contributed to the

war effort.

It's relatively difficult to speak of a

civil society in national socialism,

certainly since the outbreak of the war

because what one would generally call

the civilian population was also

deployed on the so-called home front. So

that's what he's saying linguistically

that all that was being done there was

also part of the war effort that scrap

metal was being collected that there

were public stew dinners which now

encouraged conserving resources. So now

this separation between soldiers and the

civilian population is blurred more and

more because everyone had to contribute

to the success of the war so to speak.

And then in the first phase, while the

war was still successful, they all felt

successful together.

The war was also experienced in the

capital. On the 10th of March, Heroes

Memorial Day was celebrated in public. 6

years earlier, the National Socialists

had established the holiday in place of

the day of national mourning in order to

commemorate fallen soldiers. Here's

Adolf Hitler with an emotional

assessment of the world situation from

his point of view.

England. For the dictator, the key to

success lay in further campaigns which

the German Reich soon quickly

began. Ever since the Soviet Union's

invasion of Finland in November of 1939,

the countries of Northern Europe had

become the focus of world

politics. Great Britain toyed with the

idea of sending troops to Scandinavia.

The region also increasingly became a

focus for the German Empire for a number

of reasons.

First, the Germans needed a secure

supply of ore for armaments via Norway,

northern Sweden, and northern Norway.

Secondly, the Navy wanted to have

further operation bases in the Atlantic

against the British. And third, the

British and French also saw Norway as an

important strategic area to enable them

to encircle Germany from the north. And

as a practical matter, the Germans

wanted to beat the Allies to it.

Under the cover name Va Ub, the Vmach

invaded Scandinavia on the 9th of April

1940. Germany's neighbor Denmark was

quickly

overrun. The Danes offered no resistance

at all and agreed with the Germans that

the Danish government would remain in

office because they realized resistance

was futile.

In Norway, the Vmach launched a huge air

and sea landing operation. Seven

divisions went to shore supported by

strong naval units. Within a few hours,

German units had been able to capture

many of Norway's strategically important

cities and harbors. But surprisingly,

unexpected problems arose when they

tried to occupy the capital.

The Germans had a very clever plan. They

wanted to sail the cruiser Brushia

through the Oslo fjord. At dawn on April

9th, 1940, they were going to mo the key

in Oslo and a band was going to march up

to the castle with a ringing tune to

convince the king that it would be

better to place himself under German

protection. And it was believed that the

king would agree and that there would be

no resistance at all in Norway.

Stupidly, the blue was sunk at the

narrowest point of the Oslo. The German

military atache was standing at the pier

waiting for the blue shirt. Where is the

blue in the chapel and the German

soldiers? They didn't come because it

had been sunk. And this allowed the

Norwegian king to escape. Norway decided

because he was not captured to fight to

resist. In the following weeks, fierce

fighting ensued. The German divisions

were opposed by around 60,000 Norwegian

soldiers. After the occupation of

Denmark, the Vmach had numerous

airfields in the region at its disposal

to support German units in Norway, but

there was no quick end in sight to the

fighting. There were several reasons why

this campaign in Norway lasted longer

than the Germans actually thought it

would. On the one hand, the Norwegian

army put up fierce resistance even

though they were surprised by this

attack. And secondly, because the

British and French still managed to land

large numbers of troops in Narvik.

strategic importance. The ore imported

from Sweden and Northern Norway, which

was needed for German armaments, could

thus be shipped to the German Reich all

year round. The battle for the city was

correspondingly fierce. Hello. Hello.

However, the reality on the ground was

initially

different. At Narvik, the Viamat

suffered its first tactical defeat of

the war. The mountain troops under

General Detle were driven out of Narvik

and had to retreat to the mountain

ranges around the city and Hitler went

into a panic. He ordered Detle to leave

for Sweden and to be interned there.

Detle, however, said no. He continued to

fight. He disobeyed one of Hitler's

orders. He fought on and held out until

the Allies withdrew. And that really

impressed Hitler that a general

demonstrated these so-called defiant

qualities like that. He fought and

didn't give up. And that was something

that impressed Hitler very much for the

rest of the war. And it was a quality

that he also demanded from his generals

again and again.

The order not to surrender would cost

hundreds of thousands of soldiers their

lives in the further course of the war.

After the allies had withdrawn some of

their troops, German units were able to

recapture Narvik on the 8th of June. A

few days later, the last resistance on

the Norwegian side was broken and King

Hakon fled into British exile. After 2

months, Unaane Vasa Ubong had come to an

end. The German Navy suffered heavy

losses during this time. It lost 10

destroyers off Narvik alone. Here is

some film footage from a German military

doctor in Norway. The pictures give the

impression of a harmonious coexistence

of soldiers and civilians. Even though

there were isolated massacres, the Nazi

regime basically pursued a different

occupation policy here than in

previously defeated Poland. The Nazi

worldview postulated a hierarchy of

cultures in which Scandinavian culture

was relatively similar to German culture

for racial

reasons. The occupation of Scandinavia

was seen as a special case especially

because a connection between the

Vermacht and the SS as an elite

institution and the local population was

desired, encouraged and not restricted

in any way. Marriages were also possible

there. Children who were conceived were

cared for and looked after and were

allowed to stay with their mothers. This

was virtually an expansion of the

Germanic living space, if you want to

call it that, to its original

territory. Accordingly, the propaganda

reported intensively on the campaign and

the occupation. Joseph Gerbles allowed

himself to be accompanied by a camera

crew during a visit to Oslo. The

Minister of Propaganda commemorated the

more than 20,000 German soldiers who

died during the

campaign. The fate of the sunken ship

Bla is also mentioned.

A pathetic glorification of a military

failure. The newest ship of the German

Navy at the time was hit by two cannons

that were about 50 years old.

Two further torpedo hits sent the Blucer

and her several hundred crewmen to the

bottom of the Oslo

fjord. Since the beginning of May 1940,

another theater of war had moved into

the public eye. the German western

border. For months, German and French

units had been lying largely idle

opposite each other there. It was a time

of the so-called sit-down war. Although

attempts were made to influence the

enemy with loudspeaker announcements and

other propaganda campaigns, there had

been no significant military offensives

despite the fact that France had

declared war on the German Empire in

September of 1939.

The French didn't want a war either, and

their strategy was one they used in the

First World War. It was successful, a

long war, a war of attrition, and at

some point defeating a weakened Germany

in an offensive. And that's the same

strategy that they had now in World War

II. So you waited. You hoped for a long

war of attrition in which you would then

eventually defeat the German opponent.

For their defensive strategy, the French

had built a line of massive military

fortifications on their eastern border

in the 1930s. Named after the Minister

of War, Andre Majino, the defensive line

included bunkers and forts and was

designed to protect the country.

[Music]

Like France, the German Reich had

refrained from major military action on

the Western Front since the declaration

of war. Thus, boredom was the greatest

enemy of many soldiers awaiting further

orders. Despite its success, the Polish

campaign had revealed clear deficiencies

in the Vey that made another Blitzkrieg

seem inadvisable.

It was interesting that the veh didn't

want a war against France because all

these generals had the first world war

in their bones. How were they supposed

to beat the French army with this veh

which wasn't able to prepare itself

which had the Majino line to contend

with which wasn't neutralized which had

always been upgraded? How was that going

to work? And all three commanders and

chief of the army group were against it.

Even a Nazi general like Raichaw,

commander of an army, was against it.

Everybody was against it except Hitler.

Oh, Hitler.

Hitler had wanted to start the long for

Western campaign as quickly as possible.

At the Burgof, he became increasingly

impatient in the spring of 1940. Time

and again, the offensive he had planned

for November was postponed, often

because of bad weather. With the

approach of spring, a fair weather front

appeared, much to the delight of the

furer. On the night of the 9th of May,

the dictator boarded his special train.

The destination, his new headquarters,

Felen Nest, near Ba Müster Eiffel. From

there, he wanted to lead the imminent

campaign. That same night he issued an

appeal to the Veyt stating, "Soldiers of

the Western Front, the hour of the most

decisive battle for the future of the

German nation has come. The battle

beginning today will decide the fate of

the German nation for the next thousand

years. A few hours later, the Veyt cross

the borders of Holland, Belgium, and

Luxembourg without a formal declaration

of war.

Strong airborne units supported the

advance of troops on the ground. This

was the case in the Netherlands where

the Vermacht advanced

rapidly. Nazi propaganda proudly

reported on the military successes.

In fact, the Dutch army was no match for

the veh. Only eight infantry divisions

and a small number of armored units were

able to resist the German

[Music]

invasion. By the 14th of May, ceasefire

negotiations had begun. To emphasize

their demands, the Vmach threatened to

use its air force on the still embattled

city of

Rotterdam. An ultimatum was issued. From

the German point of view, the Dutch

didn't answer in time. And when the

Dutch did reply, the Germans tried to

call off the attack. However, it was too

late. Only part of the air force could

be recalled and the remaining air force

left large parts of Rotterdam in

ruins. Over 800 civilians were killed in

the German Luftvafa attack on the

afternoon of the 14th of May 1940. 80%

of the historic old town went up in

flames. The ruthless bombardment

achieved its aim. On the evening of the

same day, Holland's surrender was

announced. Queen Vilhelmina had already

gone into exile in

Britain. After the invasion by German

troops of Belgium and the Netherlands,

the French high command assumed that the

expected German attack on France would

take place via these two states. That

was how Germany had attacked the Gnion

in the Great War. Consequently, France

moved numerous divisions to this region

to repel the expected attack there.

However, the Germans pursued a different

tactic from that of 26 years earlier.

The idea which had become known as the

Sahel Schnit plan called for the

strongest German advance to be made

through the

Arden. The Zhawa in the southern Eiffel.

The river here forms the border between

Germany and Luxembourg. The small duche

was one of the first stages for the

planned advance of the Veyt through the

Arden.

The Aden is a wooded hilly area with

relatively poor infrastructure and is

therefore a place where no one would

have thought that the Germans would

attack there with their tongue forces.

However, the Germans did the unexpected

and completely surprised the enemy.

Lieutenant General Eric Vonstein had

designed the operation. The World War I

veteran quickly convinced Hitler to go

along with his

plan. The Allies reacted as expected and

advanced with strong units against the

German advance in the north. Largely

unnoticed, German units pushed through

the Arden at the same time. After

crossing the M River at Sedan, they

swung north and advanced to the coast of

the English Channel. Thus, where the

Allied units

routed. On the morning of the 10th of

May, the plan was put into action. With

over 40,000 vehicles and 45 divisions,

Army Group A under Colonel General Gad

Vonstead set out in the central section

of the front. In order to keep the

strength of the advance a secret from

the enemy for as long as possible, it

had to proceed quickly. Within a few

hours, Luxembourg had been crossed.

Although there were roadblocks, the

country's lightly armed forces, which

totaled about 1,200, had previously

received orders not to oppose the

attackers. The result of the operation,

which lasted about 180 minutes on the

part of the Grand Duchy, was six wounded

Jearmms and 75 prisoners. The German

troops then continued their advance.

[Music]

Although the Arden were densely forested

and the road network there poorly

developed, the Veamach managed to lead

its tank units through the impassible

terrain. The units played a decisive

role in the success of the offensive.

In the inter war years, every army

experimented with tanks. What was the

best way to use tanks? The French, for

example, came to the conclusion that

tanks were best used in support of

infantry as rolling artillery, while the

Germans were the first to come up with

the idea of mixing infantry and tanks

together and letting them operate

separately from the rest of the troops.

In other words, the tank units could

lead a battle independently and thus

manage to bring a momentum to the

battlefield which the enemy couldn't

withstand.

One of the most popular generals of the

Panza Tupa, the tank armored units was

Hint Guerrerian. His core consisted of

three divisions and played a decisive

role in the advance to the Arden. Here's

Gudderion at the Seminoa River in

Buouon, Belgium. The town was considered

the gateway to France. The first units

of the VeyK quickly reached the town. A

short time later, Hudderian's units

crossed the Belgian French border. In 3

days, they had covered more than 160 km

and were on the banks of the M River

near Sudan.

The French protected their border with

the Majino line, construction of which

began at the end of the 1920s and was a

fortification like the world had never

seen in modern history. The Germans

however knew that this Majino line was

too short. That is, it didn't go all the

way into Belgium and that was exactly

where the Germans

attacked Sudan. It was here that the

Prussians had crushed French Emperor

Napoleon III in

1870, including World War I. The city

was now the target of a German attack

for the third time in 70 years.

Gudderian called for air support. For

many hours, 850 fighter planes bombed

enemy positions on the M River. Then the

artillery opened fire before German

units managed to cross the river at

several points. The Frenchman seems to

have taken leave of his senses, noted

the commander-in-chief of the army group

B. Fedor

vonbuk. Otherwise, he could have

prevented it. Again, it was also

Gudderion who had pushed the advance.

Gudderion was one of the pioneers of

German armored weapons use. He achieved

a decisive breakthrough just a few days

after the start of the offensive at

Sudan which brought the German forces

into the interior of France

as envisaged in operation Ziklnit or the

sickle cut plan. The German units then

made a swing

northward. On their way to the coast of

the English Channel, they met

resistance.

[Music]

France had modern tanks, but they were

used primarily as auxiliary weapons of

the slowmoving infantry. The German

approach was quite different.

This war of movement that the Vermart

waged was revolutionary in its tactical

operational concept. Nobody expected it.

It was a surprise and the Germans came

up against a French army that was

mentally stuck in World War I and

couldn't deal with it. And it was a

catastrophic defeat and thus the French

were not able to exploit German moments

of weakness that

existed. One German unit managed to

cover 120 km in a single day. Faced with

this speed, many French soldiers

panicked and fled or were captured.

Their high command couldn't come up with

an adequate response to the German

offensive

thinking on the spot, making quick

decisions. This was not something that

French military doctrine favored at this

time. All decisions first had to be

brought down from the very top. Whereas

German commanders very often made

decisions spontaneously on the spot,

sometimes even against the wishes of

their superiors.

Traditionally, the infantry determined

the pace of the advance as it had to

secure its flanks. However, since the

beginning of the campaign, generals of

the tank divisions had been breaking

with this rule and succeeded in doing

so. Their behavior nevertheless caused

controversy in the high command of the

Vemach. Meanwhile, Allied formations

were increasingly on the defensive. The

British Expeditionary Force and French

units had retreated to the Channel Coast

and regrouped at

Dunkirk. On the 24th of May, German

units were less than 20 km from the

French city when a dispute within the

general staff escalated over the speed

of the advance. Hitler put his foot down

and ended the dispute with a fateful

decision.

Then just outside Dunkerk near the

Channel Coast, Hitler's famous halt

order came at the end of May. Instead of

having his tank forces approached the

channel, Hitler gave the order, "No,

stop. No further here." Since then,

there has been much

speculation. What actually prompted

Hitler to give this order? The most

likely variance seems to be that Hitler

gave this order to chastise his generals

again. The backstory was that days

earlier, weeks earlier, many of his

generals didn't follow his orders and

simply advanced with their tank forces

as they saw fit, as they judged the

situation. And Hitler wanted to restore

his authority, so to speak, with this

Dunkirk order.

It wasn't until 2 days later that the

order to halt was lifted. The forced

pause had bought the Allies precious

time. Under the code name Operation

Dynamo, a huge evacuation mission had

been undertaken. An armada of several

hundred ships launched from Britain to

help the troops escape. The Germans

tried to prevent the operation.

[Music]

But the confusion was only propaganda.

Around

320,000 Allied soldiers were

successfully evacuated. From the German

point of view, it was a sobering result.

The order to halt outside of Dunkirk was

actually a major defeat for the Germans,

if you will. The Germans had failed to

beat not only France here, but Britain

as well. The best trained British troops

were at Dunkerk, and as they escaped, it

was clear that Britain still had an army

now back on the island, ready to

continue the

fight. H for

By the time the Vmach was able to take

Dunkirk on the 4th of June, 100,000

French soldiers had managed to escape

alongside the British Expeditionary

Force. They later formed the core of the

free French forces that continued to

fight against Nazi Germany. The Veyt

mostly found just war material left

behind in the

[Music]

city. In general, high speed had

characterized the advance of the

Vermacht. There was hardly any thought

of taking breaks or sleep. Gudderion had

even requisitioned 20,000 tablets of the

stimulant drug pervatin for the first

panzer division to counteract the men's

expected lack of sleep after the capture

of Dunkirk. Many soldiers now had a

moment to breathe for the first time

since the beginning of the campaign.

Back home, people took a lively interest

in the course of the war. Their thoughts

were with the soldiers in the field

since October of 1939. The radio program

of the same name had been broadcast

regularly by all Reich stations. The

focus was on music requests from

soldiers and their families.

The song requested was about a submarine

captain Prien and performed by Hint

Rumman and colleagues.

[Music]

The show enjoyed great popularity among

soldiers and civilians. Celebrities

regularly appeared in the production of

the propaganda show at the house despun

in order to grant music requests. Among

them was Mari Karuk, a 26-year-old

actress and singer who was a star at the

time.

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

is

my

[Music]

mind. Good enough.

[Music]

Since the beginning of June, Adolf

Hitler had regularly visited his

soldiers. He traveled to places he had

known as a private in World War I and

other places in the war zone. Here his

chief pilot Hunts Bower filmed the

dictator in Leel on the 2nd of June.

Hitler showed himself to be down to

earth which included a snack at the

field

kitchen. Why was that important? Well,

on the one hand, to show that as

commanderin-chief, Hitler was pulling

the strings even though he wasn't a

highranking star general and as was

generally known didn't understand as

much about the craft of war as he

perhaps should have in this position.

But it was above all to show presence,

to demonstrate loyalty to the soldiers,

but at the same time to convey to the

population the image of a defensible

Reich chancellor and leader who was

above all someone appropriately prepared

for the future. On the 28th of May,

Belgium surrendered. After the capture

of Dunkirk, the Vmach was able to fully

concentrate on the conquest of the rest

of France. Fal root or case red

triggered the second phase of the

western campaign. After heavy losses in

the final weeks, the French were only

able to put up less than 70 divisions to

oppose the attack. The Vmach then

advanced from northeastern France in two

main directions.

On the 9th of June, German units had

reached the Sain near Ruan. Some 500

years earlier, the French national saint

Jonavar had been burned at the stake

here. The symbolic city fell into German

hands. In the process, Ruen's Gothic

cathedral was threatened with

destruction.

the as guardian of French cultural

treasures. This was a distorted image

created by Nazi propaganda. It wasn't

long before German soldiers looted

cultural and artistic items on a grand

scale.

On the 19th of May, General Maxim Wagand

had taken over the supreme command of

the French forces from Maurice Galim and

had withdrawn his troops to the aonomous

Wayand line. The interception position

ran south of the Somat and A rivers.

Despite this measure, it did not succeed

in decisively stopping

[Music]

[Music]

the

for the government left the capital and

fled to Bordeaux. On the 16th of June,

President Leun instructed Marshall Phipe

Patan to take the nation's fortunes into

his own hands. The 84year-old veteran of

the First World War was considered a

national hero in his homeland. But the

hopes that had been placed in Patine

were not fulfilled. On June 17th, he

delivered a sobering radio address. It

is with a heavy heart that I tell you

today that the struggle must be

stopped. A short time later, Adolf

Hitler received a request for a

ceasefire from Patane at his

headquarters.

Here we see a brief outburst of emotion

with his circle of confidants. The hated

Treaty of Versailles had finally been

avenged in a symbolic way.

[Music]

[Music]

The Nazis staged the day as a

humiliation for France. They met in the

same railroad carriage in which the

German Reich had to sign the armistice

in the First World War. 22 years

earlier, Hitler had had the carriage

specifically brought out of the museum

for the ceremony. General Huninger took

part in the negotiations on behalf of

the French side. In the end, they

crafted a treaty which said that about

60% of France would be occupied by the

Vmach. In the remaining part of the

country, a regime was established named

after the spa town of Vishi which

collaborated closely with the German

Reich. For the Furer, it was a day of

[Music]

triumph.

Minister, President

[Applause]

About 80 km southwest of Compen lies

Paris. Shortly after the negotiations,

Adolf Hitler arrived in the capital for

a visit. At about 5:30, his plane had

landed at the military airport at Lab

Bourge. Next was a morning sightseeing

tour in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.

I think that was actually a private

triumph on his part. A private quiet

triumph. The pictures that came out of

it were staged beautifully. No

background noise so to speak, no people.

But I think that for Hitler, apart from

these scenes, it was simply about this

personal triumph to be there calmly,

quietly with his inner circle, his

entourage in the lion's den, to stand

there, to have achieved that, to be in

Paris, to have defeated the fearful

adversary of the First World War and to

savor that moment privately on a small

scale. That, I think, was what that

morning visit to Paris was all about.

Paris

Paris is the worldass city Plex salons

and for many Germans it was also a kind

of place for longing and Hitler appeared

there not only as the little private

from the first world war but now as a

leader and right chancellor of the

Germans in the capital of the defeated

enemy. This was of course a great theme

for Nazi propaganda which they knew how

to use.

[Music]

At the Vmach victory parade in the city,

however, there was no sign of the fura.

On the 14th of June, after the

negotiations, the 18th army under

General Vonukler entered Paris without a

fight. What the Imperial German army had

tried in vain for years in the First

World War, the Veyt had now accomplished

in a few weeks. German soldiers proudly

climbed the Eiffel Tower and hoisted the

Imperial War flag over the

city. For a long time, the generals had

opposed the Western campaign. At the

moment of triumph, these concerns seemed

forgotten. Hitler praised the men for

the services rendered to the victory of

German arms in the fight for the freedom

and future of our greater German Reich

and promoted numerous generals to the

rank of field marshal including G von

Runet and Fedor vonbach the commanders

and chief of army groups A and B

respectively.

Hitler very cleverly flattered the

generals. He promoted many of them to

field marshal. And being a field

marshal, well, that was a special thing.

Hindenburg was a field marshal. You

became a field marshal when you took a

fortress. And how many of them became

field marshals? They hadn't taken a

fortress, and they didn't really have

any special merits, but they had the

rank of field marshal. He showered them

with medals, and in doing so, Hitler

bought their loyalty to the end of his

days.

A wave of euphoria broke out all over

the empire. To celebrate the victory,

church bells were ordered rung for 7

days and flags were to be hoisted for 10

days. Soldiers who returned home

received an enthusiastic welcome like

this cycling squadron in Bral Baden.

[Music]

[Music]

Also to celebrate the campaign,

propaganda films such as Tanks Attack

and Victory in the West were made. Tank

General Heder played a big part in these

films.

Victory in the West hit German cinemas a

few months after the end of the campaign

and was very popular with audiences.

In the third there was indeed something

that these days was known as embedded

journalism. In that war correspondents

were close to the troops photographing

or filming and news reels were then made

from these recordings or a film like

Victory in the West which painted a very

smooth picture of the war. Not so smooth

in other words that there would have

been no need to make any more effort but

smooth enough that there was never

actually any risk of defeat.

The war was depicted as a romantic male

adventure without danger. Criticism of

the military's actions was dismissed.

Despite the rapid success against France

and the Benel countries, it would have

been wise to discuss their strategies

there.

[Music]

Nowadays, when we think of the Western

campaign of 1940, we very often still

have all those Nazi propaganda images in

our minds. Tanks and planes working

together and a highly modern, well

equipped army. In truth, this was only

part of the Viam and quite honestly just

a small part of the Viamat in

1940. The French campaign was actually

won by 10 German armored divisions. and

the infantry they marched behind just as

they did in the first world war. And

there you can see that the Viamat had

not yet then fully become the war of

movement. They had done it in their

minds but there were great problems in

actually doing it because one unit was

marching ahead and there were huge gaps

with the infantry lagging behind. This

could be solved relatively easily in

France but it became a serious problem

in

Russia.

company. On Saturday, July 6th, 1940,

Adolf Hitler returned to Berlin from his

headquarters. 7 and 1/2 years after

seizing power, the dictator had reached

the height of his popularity following

the victory in the Western campaign. The

crowds cheered him on at Anhal train

station.

[Music]

The drive to the Reich Chancellery in

his open Mercedes was a triumphal

procession. The head of the Supreme

Command of the Vey, General Wilham

Kitle, proclaimed Hitler the greatest

commander of all time.

As the successes came, he really became

like a cult leader in the sense of cult.

There was a kind of godlike worship of

this man who was almost no longer

perceived as human and also as he was

depicted in the propaganda that he

hardly ever slept and was always awake

and cared for his people. So now it's

starting to look like he's God Almighty,

so to speak.

With a victory over France, enthusiasm

knew no bounds. That's when people

thought that we could actually walk on

water.

It took just 10 months for Nazi Germany

to gain hegemony over the European

continent after the outbreak of World

War II. But it would take years and cost

millions of lives to liberate Europe and

Germany again.

[Music]

[Music]

territorial.

[Applause]

[Music]

We shall defend our island whatever the

cross may be. We shall fight on the

beaches. We shall fight on the landing

grounds. We shall fight in the fields

and in the streets. We shall fight in

the hills. We shall never surrender.

[Music]

[Music]

Naturally, the United States of America

was suddenly and deliberately attacked

by naval and air forces of the Empire of

Japan. We will gain the inevitable

triumph. So help us God.

[Applause]

[Music]

here.

[Music]

[Applause]

Star. The Nazis entered this war under a

rather childish delusion that they were

going to bomb everybody else and nobody

was going to bomb them.

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

Sing Berlin, the summer of 1940.

In the capital of the Third Reich,

Germans went about their daily business.

It had been less than a year since Adolf

Hitler had plunged Europe into war. The

fact that German soldiers were in

Poland, Scandinavia, Belgium, the

Netherlands, and France was barely

noticed at Berlin's Vanzi.

[Music]

All in all, I don't think we should

forget these were all campaigns that the

Germans were able to live with easily

because they had remained completely

free of all the effects of the war up to

that point. And another essential

element, the wars had been so short that

the losses from wounds or by actual

deaths of the soldiers had been very

small.

At that time, waging war was still easy

for the

Germans. After all the lightning

victories in Europe, Germans hoped that

the last enemy in the war, Great

Britain, would now give in and make

peace with the Reich.

Actually, they didn't want England as an

adversary, but as an ally. In this

respect, speculation about whether

things would then continue had calmed

down a

bit. But in hindsight, some Germans

didn't quite know what to make of this

precarious peace either.

On July 19th, 1940, their leader Adolf

Hitler made an official peace offer to

England. The British did not dignify it

with a response. Herman Guring, the

commander-in-chief of the German

Luftvafa, was now responsible for the

success of Unaneaman Zuva, planning for

the invasion of Great Britain had been

going on for

weeks. German airborne units were to

take off from airfields in Belgium,

Holland, and northern France to first

conquer the airspace over the

island. After that, German troops were

to land on England's shores. The German

Lufafa was wellprepared since their

devastating mission in the Spanish Civil

War. Their pilots had become adept at

aerial bombing, shooka attacks, and

dropping incendurary bombs. After

initial skirmishes over the English

Channel, German airborne units began

bombing the British mainland.

The battle of Britain began on August

13th with the so-called Eagle Day when

stronger German bomber units attacked

British industrial centers. At first,

the Germans only attacked the British

infrastructure, airfields, radar

stations, and were relatively successful

there as well.

They believed that with a few days of

air raids on British airports, one could

smash the British air defense, the

fighter command, and gain air

superiority. And then, if Hitler wanted

to, he could order a landing on the

south coast as well.

Great Britain was expecting an invasion

of the Veyart, and so the men of the

English Home Guard armed themselves

against the enemy. The Germans had to be

prevented from landing on the island by

any and all means. To prevent Nazi

landing craft from even reaching the

channel coast, the British had installed

flamethrower systems

there. With Winston Churchill as prime

minister, the British had an avowed

opponent of Hitler. He wanted to prevent

Hitler's rule over Europe at all costs.

Otherwise, as Churchill said, the world

would sink into the abyss of a new dark

age. The prime minister rejected any

discussion of a negotiated peace with

the Nazis.

Churchill was an interesting figure in

that he initially admired Hitler. He

wrote a portrait of him in the early

30s. I think it was printed in 34 or 35.

It's kind of famous, so he couldn't hide

an admiration for Hitler's successes.

And then only toward at the end of the

30s when he saw that the whole matter

would amount to a highly aggressive

policy which would ultimately also

involve Great Britain did he change his

mind and say we must fight this man.

Muslim become

blood, toil, tears, and sweat. Winston

Churchill prophecied for his people, and

a war against a monstrous tyranny such

as had never been surpassed in the dark

catalog of mankind's crimes, which must

end only with victory at all costs.

British combat morale was high.

On August 25th, British bombers took off

for the first air raid on the capital of

the Third

Reich. The inviability of Berlin, noted

German judicial official Friedri Kelner

in his diary of which there had been

abundant talk had proved to be a vain

haze. In the face of such attacks, Adolf

Hitler clamorred in Berlin's sport

palast.

Arctic driver.

For the first time since the beginning

of the war, the Germans were made aware

of their own vulnerability. Despite

various Blitzkrieg victories, the

Luftvafa was unable to keep enemy plane

formations out.

Berlin did not seem particularly

impressed by this. What could be said,

however, was that doubts about Guring's

abilities and capacities to defend the

were beginning to

[Music]

grow. The rice marshall then received

orders from Hitler to target London in

retaliation for the Royal Air Force's

night raids on

Berlin. On the afternoon of September

7th, 1940, 364 German bombers took off,

escorted by 515 fighter planes. Their

target were the docks in the middle of

the East End, a workingclass

neighborhood. On that first evening,

more than 400 Londoners died and another

1,500 were seriously injured.

In the air battles with the Royal Air

Force, the German pilots suffered

defeats, some of them heavy. Their

losses by wounded, imprisonment, and

death were significantly higher than

those of the RAF. The British pilots

fought over their homeland and were

quickly ready for action again after an

emergency landing. Their Spitfires and

Hurricanes were fast and maneuverable.

The German Air Force failed to gain air

superiority over the island.

[Applause]

On September 17th, Hitler postponed

Unaniman Zuva until the following

spring. Eventually, the landing in

England wasn't even attempted. For the

first time, a nation had successfully

defied the Nazis.

In a way, this was seen as not a bad

thing. As one diorist said, "This was a

terrible week for us, but it was not

seen as a defeat." And conversely, it

has to be said also very importantly,

the British did indeed see it as a

victory. It was the first time that a

nation had been able to put a stop to

the Nazis. So for their self-confidence,

it was an incredible boost, whereas the

Germans tended to talk it down as these

things can happen.

[Music]

[Music]

at the end of October. Hitler traveled

to Hendai to meet Francisco Franco. The

dictator urgently needed support against

an England that was resisting fiercely.

The Spaniards were to take Gibralar from

the British, but the meeting turned out

differently than planned. Franco's

special train arrived too late.

[Music]

The unity of the two fascist leaders, as

depicted by the news reels, was only a

facade. Franco had no intention

whatsoever of entering the war. He had

ruled over a devastated Spain for only

18 months, which he had just gotten

under control after 3 years of civil

war. And with German help, the Cado

stayed out of

it. Meanwhile, in order to put political

and military pressure on England, the

German air force continued to take off

in the direction of Great Britain. But

the Luftwafer had problems.

When they sent bomber units to England,

they always had to send fighter planes

with them for escort and protection. And

the problem with these fighters was that

the fuel tanks were relatively small.

They could only fight for a certain time

in English airspace, sometimes only for

14 minutes, and then they had to

immediately return. In other words, a

German plane on a mission against

Britain could only fight there for a

short time, while a British plane could

fight there for hours.

After the conquest of British airspace

failed, thus putting a landing on the

island out of reach, Hitler wanted at

least to force an armistice. For this,

the British arms industry had to be

weakened, and at the same time, the

morale of the British people had to be

broken. Now the civilian population was

targeted.

In 1940, it seemed that bombing London

was somehow a way to get Britain ready

for peace.

The British called the attacks on their

capital the Blitz after the Nazi

propaganda word Blitz Creek. In the

weeks that followed, only a few days and

nights passed without bombings. Again

and again, the Luftvatha carried out

small targeted attacks. Londoners had

come to feel the hum of German hankls,

dorners, and junkers at all

times. There were no air raid shelters

in London. People took refuge in the

subway stations, which saved the lives

of tens of thousands. Some

650,000 children had already been moved

to the countryside. Since the beginning

of November, the bombers had been coming

mainly at night. During Christmas week

1940, London experienced the most

devastating conflration since the city's

great fire in the 17th century. But the

British remained steadfast and

pragmatic. Cardboard coffins, lime bags,

and body pits were prepared in order to

be able to quickly recover and deal with

the fatalities.

What people in Germany tend to forget,

however, is that German bombing raids in

1940 caused very high casualties among

the British population. Up to 40,000

deaths in the first weeks and months

after the Battle of Britain

began. When Buckingham Palace was hit,

King George V 6th and his wife Elizabeth

escaped with a scare. But the royal

couple stayed in London to assist their

people.

The British didn't see it as attacks on

the air arament industry. They saw it as

attacks on civilians that the Germans

wanted to hit civilians. Naturally, the

bombing was inaccurate because churches

were also hit because hundreds of people

were killed. And then the amazing thing

for the Germans and maybe for the

British was that the civilian population

came together. The morale didn't

collapse. The British were far from

capitulating. Actually, it was just the

opposite. who was determined to do

whatever necessary also strengthened the

morale of the British considerably. We

shall defend our island whatever the

cost may be. We shall fight on the

beaches. We shall fight on the landing

grounds. We shall fight in the fields

and in the streets. We shall fight in

the hills. We shall never surrender.

Starting in mid- November, the Air Force

shifted the focus of its attacks and

aimed primarily at industrial targets

outside of

London. On November 14th, under the

cover of Unaniman Mund Shine Zonata,

German units flew a heavy nightbombing

raid on Coventry. The extent of the

destruction was enormous. In the future,

to Coventry was the name given to the

destruction of a city from the air in

the cynical parlance of Nazi propaganda

minister Joseph

Gerbles. Visibly shaken, Prime Minister

Winston Churchill visited the ruins of

the historic St. Michael's Cathedral and

the rubble of the industrial city in the

heart of the British Isles the following

morning.

Coventry Coventry was chosen because it

was the center of the British aircraft

engine industry. They were hit, but

these aircraft engine factories were

located in the city center. Spread

around the city center. The whole city

burned down. 500 dead. The terming was

then used because of the great damage.

But there was one thing that wasn't

achieved and that was lasting damage to

the armament's industry. because after

just a few weeks it continued to produce

at the old production

levels. The day before the devastating

bombing of Coventry, British pilots took

off on an air strike target Berlin.

Stalin's foreign minister was expected

there for talks.

Winston Churchill later wrote in his

memoirs, "We had heard of this

conference beforehand, and though we had

not been invited, we did not wish to be

left entirely out of the

negotiations. Soviet foreign minister

Vakislav Molotov arrived at Anhalt

railway station. He was there to

negotiate spheres of influence in

Scandinavia and the Balkans for Stalin.

Hitler on the other hand wanted to bring

the Soviets into an alliance to secure

himself against England. But Molotov was

a difficult negotiator who did not trust

the Germans. There was a memorable

situation at the state banquet.

Molotov. During the meetings with

Hitler, Molotov had to go into the air

raid shelter because there were attacks

on Berlin. and he told Stalin that

Hitler was a vegetarian and that no meat

was available there. This may sound like

a side issue, but it led to a decline in

the Nazis reputation in Moscow. They had

to go to air raid shelters. They didn't

eat meat. Strange people. He told Stalin

about the limp handshake of Hitler who

seemed to him more like a feminine

figure than a determined dictator. He

made no impression at all on the Soviet

side. That's quite interesting. And

that's why Stalin was sure that Hitler

wouldn't attack the Soviet Union. They

wouldn't do that. They couldn't even

protect Berlin from air

raids. Formally, they were still allies.

A non-aggression pact with the Soviet

Union had existed for a year. Both

countries had enriched themselves from

the spoils of the German war and Poland

had been divided between them, but

Stalin refused to officially ally with

Nazi

Germany. By September, two other nations

had entered into a pact with a Third

Reich. Here, Japanese Minister of War

Tojo Hideki arrives in Berlin. The

purpose of the visit from Japan was the

signing of the so-called three power

pact between Hitler's Germany, Italy,

and Japan. The division of the world was

regulated by treaty. Italy would receive

the Mediterranean region as its sphere

of influence. Japan, all of East Asia,

and Germany, Europe, and the East. With

this demonstration of strength, it was

believed, especially in Tokyo, that the

US could be deterred from entering the

war.

During this period, Japan was always

concerned with finding partners and to

be accepted as an equal partner. Hitler

who himself had very great territorial

aspirations naturally selected Japan as

the ideal partner in Asia from a certain

point

on. But the problem was that these three

powers unlike the allies never found a

common strategy. Each worked for its own

interests. Whether in Europe, whether in

Africa, the German Empire did something

different than Italy and cooperation

with Japan never actually took place.

Such academic visits, actually tangible

military advice, had a tradition. For a

good 50 years, the Germans had been

instructing the Japanese Empire in

matters of war strategy.

Adolf Hitler's Adolf Hitler's Nazi

Germany seemed to Japan to be a suitable

ally. In addition, Japan was impressed

to a certain extent by the fact that

Hitler had this idea that we were

dividing the world into three large

spheres of influence. And these three

countries together represented a

bullwick as a bullwark in ideological

terms against Bolevik Russia. The

Bolevik Soviet Union on the one hand,

but also as an ideological and political

bullwwork against the Anglo-Americans,

against London and Washington.

London and Washington.

Japan moved ever closer to its powerful

German ally. In March 1941, Reich

Marshall Herman Guring received Japanese

Foreign Minister Matsuoka at his

Cotenhal estate. Hitler hoped to keep

the United States out of war in Europe

and instead tie it up in a conflict in

Asia. Japan was to be encouraged to

launch a rapid war of aggression in the

Far East. Under the rule of Emperor

Hirohito, the military was the most

powerful institution in Japan. Hirohito

supported the imperial claims of his

generals. The Japanese army and fleet

were removed from any parliamentary

control and were directly subordinated

to the emperor.

[Music]

Japan's military government was

preparing to bring all of East Asia

under its control. Since the First World

War, the young industrial nation had

been striving for dominance in the Asian

region.

[Music]

In Japan, on the political side and

especially on the military side, there

was always the view during that period

that you were not an equal partner.

Although militarily you waged war

successfully in the Russell Japanese war

in World War I, after these wars that

were waged successfully, militarily

successfully, Japan had to concede

certain things politically and concede

them to the west and concede them to the

West's liking.

Initially, Japan's colonial ambitions

were directed against neighboring China.

Manuria in the north of the country was

rich in raw

materials. Nippon took advantage of the

disunityity of the giant empire which

was bleeding to death in the civil war

and occupied the northern province in a

coup d'eta. But Japan's hunger for raw

materials wasn't

satisfied. In 1937, Japan provoked

another war with China. This time to

conquer it completely. A civil war had

been ravaging the giant Chinese empire

for 10 years. After the rapid conquest

of Beijing, Japanese units bombarded

Shanghai, but Japan didn't succeed in

completely conquering China. Instead, it

turned south. In Indo-China, Vishy

France, which collaborated with the

German ally, granted Japan the right of

passage, the stationing of troops, and

the use of

airfields. Over the course of a year,

Japan brought all of the country's major

military bases under its

control. Meanwhile, hardliner Tojo

Hideki gained influence. So much so that

the United States felt compelled to

impose an official embargo against the

Japanese Empire.

The United States actually had two main

interests in Asia. One was economic

interests that they had to represent

there. At that time it was clearly

understood that one of the coming

markets from a capitalist point of view

would sooner or later be Asia. On the

other hand, it was also the case that

there were raw materials in Southeast

Asia in which the United States also had

an interest. Also in terms of security,

the US had aspirations to continue to

have a presence in the Asia-Pacific

region.

for one of the most important US naval

bases in Asia was in the Philippines.

Nevertheless, no one there seemed to

believe in a Japanese invasion. About

10,000 American soldiers were stationed

there. Their equipment and weapons were

mostly outdated, but the US government

was gradually turning the archipelago

into a fortress.

The president of the United States still

hesitated to enter the war officially.

On January 20th, 1941, Franklin D.

Roosevelt was sworn in in Washington. He

was the first US president to run for a

third term. In his address, he made it

clear on whose side the US would be on

in the future.

Freedom means the supremacy of human

rights

everywhere. Our support goes to those

who struggle to gain those rights and

keep them. Our strength is our unity of

purpose to that high

concept. There can be no

end save

victory. In a certain sense, the United

States had entered the war indirectly.

The US had supported its American

partners in Europe, that is London, with

armaments. Armaments also arrived in

China, by the way, Japan's adversary,

which of course didn't go unnoticed by

Japan and also played a major role.

Japanese policy had moved more and more

in the direction of anti-Americanism,

anti-Americanism.

At the port of Halifax in the Canadian

province of Nova Scotia, freighters were

loaded with American weapons and

supplies that the US was providing to

Great Britain. In a blazing speech,

Churchill had addressed Roosevelt and

appealed for America's support.

Put your confidence in

us. Give us your faith and your

blessing. And under providence all will

be well. We shall not fail or falter. We

shall not weaken or tire. Neither the

sudden shock of battle nor the longdrawn

trials of vigilance and exertion will

wear us

down. Give us the tools and we will

finish the

job. German submarines repeatedly

succeeded in torpedoing the ships loaded

with equipment and weapons.

But the Royal Navy struck back.

Survivors of the sunk battleship Bismar,

once the pride of the German Navy, went

ashore in Halifax.

Great Britain at that time still had the

strongest navy in the world. The German

Navy, which only upgraded in the 1930s,

simply couldn't keep up with that. It

did have big battleships like the Tits,

the Bismar, but one was sunk very

quickly. The other was just lying around

in harbors and was also sunk towards the

end of the war. So the big German Reich,

the Germans Navy couldn't keep up with

the Royal Navy at

all. In October 1940, Adolf Hitler

traveled by special train to the Allied

Italy to Florence.

Benito Mussolini received the furer at

the train station. Hitler had once

admired the fascist leader and taken him

as a model for his own political career.

Il Duche who transformed Italy into a

fascist dictatorship was now in turn

taking a lesson from his former master

student. He too now wanted to expand his

empire. Mussolini. Mussolini had two

major goals. First he wanted to make the

Mediterranean Amaran nostrumm that is

our sea like the Roman Empire should be

Italian possessions around the

Mediterranean. And secondly he wanted to

expand his colonial empire in northeast

Africa. Egypt and Sudan together with

the existing possessions in Libya and

Abiscinia should become a large colonial

empire among the Italian population.

Such plans met with enthusiastic

[Applause]

approval. Mussolini, who had not

expected war to break out in Europe

before 1942, witnessed his allies subdue

half of Europe within a year. Illuche

was convinced that Italy could achieve

something comparable just as easily.

Mussolini. Mussolini had great aims, but

what he didn't want to admit, only very

limited means. He had an army that was

not at its peak in terms of training.

And his country was not prepared

economically or in terms of armaments

for a long industrial war. And the

problem was Mussolini didn't lead only

one campaign. No, he led several

campaigns at the same time. And all

these campaigns ended in disasters.

In a gross miscalculation of his own

fighting strength, Iluche first marched

Italian troops into the French Alps.

After the failure of this invasion, he

then ordered Egypt and Greece to be

attacked simultaneously, but he lost in

Greece and in return Greece took over

Italian occupied territory in

neighboring Albania. Mussolini now had

to ask Hitler for help.

Italian Italy suffered a heavy defeat in

Greece and onethird of the Albanian

territory which was in Italian hands was

now occupied by the Greeks. Now there

was a problem for Germany. The Italian

ally had to be supported. And secondly,

there was another problem. At the same

time in Yugoslavia, which had been very

pro access, there was now a coup. And

the new government was pro- allies. And

so Hitler decided to intervene in the

Balkans with an attack on Yugoslavia and

on Greece.

On April 6th, the Vmach invaded

Yugoslavia and Greece simultaneously

without a declaration of war. The news

reels had an opportunity to show

victorious soldiers.

[Music]

[Music]

The campaign in the Balkans proceeded

similarly to all previous campaigns. It

was a typical lightning campaign. The

Germans managed again within a very

short time to break the enemy resistance

and to occupy both countries relatively

quickly.

After 11 days, the Yugoslav army

surrendered unconditionally. About

350,000 soldiers became German prisoners

of war. About half of them were taken to

Germany to be used as forced labor. The

others awaited a merciless fate under

German

occupation. The commanding general and

committed national socialist Yim

vonzfles, for example, expected the

soldiers to break all resistance

ruthlessly. Anyone found resisting or

fleeing with a weapon in his hand should

be shot immediately. Now began the

terror in the occupied territories.

Shortly after the occupation of both

countries, there were uprisings,

especially in Serbia against the German

occupiers, and the Germans immediately

reacted with unheard of brutality. Their

thinking was that the so-called Balkan

mentality would only understand the

language of violence. And the harder

they would crack down now at the

beginning, the more they would have

peace later. These uprisings were

suppressed with the greatest brutality.

There were mass shootings of hostages.

And then there was a kind of graveyard

peace in the truest sense of the word in

Serbia until the end of the German

occupation. In Panchcheo, a small

Serbian town near Belgrade, a column of

Yugoslav soldiers marched in captivity.

Again and again, there were partisan

attacks against the Germans. That was

also the case here. Two members of the

Vafan SS came under fire. One of them

was fatally shot.

The German occupiers then put 40

arbitrarily selected civilians in front

of a so-called drumhead trial. Among

them, a woman and a 15year-old school

boy. On April 21st and 22nd, 14 of them

were executed at the cemetery wall of

Panchibo by a Vmach firing squad. 18

others were hanged in the cemetery. The

massacre became a spectacle filmed and

photographed by the soldiers present.

The war in Greece was also short-lived.

After initially fierce resistance, the

Greeks had to admit defeat. On April

23rd, Germans and Italians occupied the

defeated

country. In Greece, from the beginning,

it was above all about robbery and

plunder. The war against Greece was more

a side aspect of the whole event. And

the Germans wanted above all to secure a

military occupation. It was also divided

up with the other allies including

Italy. Their sheer terror prevailed and

the Greeks also resisted very quickly.

There was a partisan movement that tried

to fight this brutal German rule and

then again the German violence

escalated and it became unbounded

brutality as can only be found in

Eastern Europe in Poland and the Soviet

[Music]

Union. On April 28th, the sacking of

Athens began. The greatest famine in the

history of Greece followed. Hitler's

aid, Hinrich Himmler, received authority

to deport all the country's Jews. Here,

a walk of genocide through the cradle of

civilization. Himmler on the Acropolis

was a symbol of victory for me. There

are only a few real symbolic places in

Europe that everyone knows. the Eiffel

Tower or London Bridge and the Acropolis

is undoubtedly one of them. And you see

it quite often in news reels, German

soldiers, not somewhere in Greece, but

on the Acropolis. Everyone knows that it

was a symbol. Greece was also defeated

by the Germans. Of course, people like

Himmler didn't let themselves be

deprived of these staged events,

especially since the SS Leandata Adolf

Hitler was also involved in the

occupation of Greece, that is the

central division of the Vaffan

SS. With propaganda in mind, Adolf

Hitler awarded the Knights Cross to one

of the members. By the end of the war,

SS troops with the help of the Vey had

murdered some 60,000 Greek Jews. Hitler

left most of the occupied country to its

hapless ally Mussolini.

This axis, as it was called

propagandistically, the Rome Berlin

axis. These two originally equal

partners now suddenly became a senior

partner and a junior partner. Italy was

politically, economically, and

militarily dependent on Germany for the

rest of the war.

However, Mussolini's big man addiction

knew no bounds. He was still convinced

that Italy had a right to extensive

colonial possessions in Africa. As early

as 1936, the Duche had announced before

an enthusiastic crowd the annexation of

Abbiscinia and the return of the empire

to the holy hills of Rome.

Italian troops had invaded what is now

Ethiopia and begun a ruthless war of

conquest. The Italian expeditionary army

was 200,000 men strong, the largest ever

to invade the African

continent. It waged a brutal war in

violation of international law using

poison gas on a massive scale.

But Mussolini's plans for a further

enlargement of Italian East Africa

failed. The Duchese's troops were

threatened with catastrophic defeats.

Hitler promised Mussolini at the end of

1940 to send a tank division to North

Africa. This was a purely defensive

measure. Hitler wanted to prevent his

ally from suffering a serious defeat in

the Mediterranean and the British from

suddenly being able to threaten Europe

from the south. Then in midFebruary

1941, the first German troops arrived in

North Africa under the command of left

tenant general Avvin Raml, marking the

birth of the German Africa Corp.

which was allied with the British had

failed. In the meantime, even in eastern

Libya, the province of Siranaka was in

British hands. Now, the British

threatened to take the capital Tripoli.

Raml did not wait for the orders of his

Italian superiors, but acted on his own

authority.

RL officially received the order to act

defensively, that is to support the

Italians so that their colonial empire

didn't collapse. However, RML quickly

decided to launch an offensive on his

own initiative and was successful. But

at the same time overstretched his

supply lines and ran into major

problems. And here the island of Malta

was crucial. from Malta which was on

British hands. The Royal Air Force and

also the Royal Navy could massively and

strategically disrupt the German and

Italian convoys to North Africa. Royal

Air Force

Navy. British forces brought in their

supplies from Gibralar via Malta, which

lies between Sicily and the coast of

North

Africa. To disrupt the Royal Navy's

supply lines on the way from Gibralar to

the Suez Canal, German and Italian air

forces repeatedly attacked Malta.

The tiny archipelago experienced 3,000

air raids in the course of its 2-year

siege. 14,000 tons of bombs landed

around the capital, Valetta, but the

Maltese held out.

[Music]

There were always aims on the German

side and especially on the Italian side

to take the island of Mortar, but in the

end, this enterprise was postponed until

Never Day. Ultimately, this is one

reason why the German and Italian forces

in North Africa could never be well

supplied.

But for the time being, Raml and his

Africa corps achieved further successes

in a hand-to-hand coup. Several times he

ignored the waiting orders of the army

high command. On April 10th, 1941,

Kiranaka was recaptured and the Germans

surprisingly captured the British

fortress city of Tbrook.

Raml was the decisive person for the

next two years in North Africa.

Officially, he was subordinate to the

Italians, but very often he waged his

own war, invoking the special

relationship he had with Hitler.

He often ignored his own superiors in

the very often waged a kind of private

war down there but successfully and

that's what saved him from many a

situation.

As long as Hitler's favorite general

delivered such spectacular successes,

complaints about the disobedient

commander fell on deaf ears in the

Bisgotten

Burgorf. Hitler himself dubbed RML the

most audacious tank general we have in

the German army. Within 3 weeks, the

Africa Corps had advanced some 800 km to

the east all the way to the Egyptian

border and was now threatening the

British troops stationed there.

RL with his insubordination and

impetuous war of movement shaped the

image of this war and became a nightmare

to the British and he managed with

relatively few means to keep a British

superior force at bay.

The Allied troops stationed in Tbrook

were initially mostly inexperienced,

newly deployed units, including an

Australian division. Minefields were

laid to reinforce the city's defenses.

RML repeatedly failed to capture Tbrook

and eventually had the city besieged.

[Music]

For the British, preventing the Germans

from advancing rapidly into Egypt was an

important victory that also boosted

morale on the home front. The armament's

industry was running at full speed,

although the capital of Great Britain

was still subject to massive bombing. In

the spring of 1941, German bombs landed

near Bond Street in London, causing

severe devastation. They were intended

to weaken the morale of the population,

but the hoped for effect didn't occur.

On the

contrary, the massive casualty toll of

German bombing among the civilian

population made any propaganda to create

an image of the enemy in Britain

redundant.

[Music]

The air battle for England ultimately

lasted from August 1940 to May 1941, and

the Germans changed their tactics

several times. In the summer of 1940,

they attacked airports, then London,

then the air armament industry. There

was a final heavy attack in May 1941 on

London, which caused over 1,000 deaths.

And the air war continued only in

homeopathic doses. There were still a

few attacks but with hardly any impact.

So Britain had finally passed the great

test in May of

1941. Unmoved, Londoners cleared away

the rubble. Legendary US journalist

Edward Muro reported in his program This

is London as an eyewitness of the

attitude of the British during the Blitz

attacks. There was no bravado, no loud

voices, only a quiet acceptance of the

situation. To me, those people were

incredibly brave and

calm. Prime Minister Churchill paid

tribute to the defenders of England,

saying that never before did so many owe

so much to so

few. The few became the nickname of the

Allied pilots.

However, the British looking at their

cities did not yet feel as if they were

the victors.

The crucial thing is that in air attacks

at least, dictatorships and democracies

are not so different from each other.

The belief that democracy would fight

the good war and dictatorship would

fight the bad war. That's true for World

War II as a whole, of course. But if we

now look closely at the individual forms

of war like air war, you can't see any

difference. The images were the same

after the attacks whether in England or

Germany. Bomb strikes at the old fish

market in Hamburg. The neighboring main

church of St. Peters was also hit. An

amateur filmed these images in mid-March

of 1941.

100 people died in that bombing of the

Hanziatic city. Such recordings were

actually forbidden under

penalty. Berlin was also under

increasing attack from the Royal Air

Force. Secretly shot footage showed the

effects of such a British bombing raid

on the residential areas of the capital.

Again and again, the British formations

overcame the German flag positions. Only

the cowardice of the German fighter

pilots was to blame, claimed their

commander-in-chief, Herman Guring, in

order to distract the attention from his

own

[Music]

failure. Nazi propaganda did not shy

away from using the deadly threat to the

German civilian population for its own

purposes. Sending children from Berlin

to the countryside, for example, was

unabashedly declared to be a

recreational vacation for the

youngest.

[Music]

After all, you sent the children to the

countryside where they are safe and the

state actually wants to take advantage

of that to be able to indoctrinate the

children better in the schools in the

countryside and that doesn't always

succeed. Well, that's actually a chance

to get a stronger grip and you managed

to do social welfare and that was also

recognized by the Germans who saw that

the state cared that it was responding

quickly. Gerbles was quick to appear in

cities, didn't hide and so one managed

to keep up morale to some extent. There

was depression, there was dejection, but

there was no revolt against the regime.

The Nazi regime still ensured that the

victims of the bombing raids were laid

out like martyrs as here in Noveid on

the Rine. Most Germans still had no idea

of the number of victims they would face

in the years to come. The Allied bombing

war against Nazi Germany had only just

begun.

[Music]

Iron territori.

volume. All people,

[Applause]

[Music]

we shall defend our island, whatever the

cost may be. We shall fight on the

beaches. We shall fight on the landing

grounds. We shall fight in the fields

and in the streets. We shall fight in

the hills. We shall never surrender.

[Music]

[Music]

The United States of America was

suddenly and deliberately attacked by

naval and air forces of the Empire of

Japan. We will gain the inevitable

triumph. So help us God.

[Applause]

[Music]

The

star and she turned to the

[Applause]

home. The Nazis entered this war under a

rather childish delusion that they were

going to bomb everybody else and nobody

was going to bomb them.

[Music]

[Music]

Take super.

[Music]

[Music]

Sunday, June 22nd, 1941. German troops

crossed the borders of the Soviet Union.

The war they had started was an invasion

without a declaration of

war. The soldiers were in a confident

mood. They had been at war in Europe for

22 months, always accompanied by quick

victories. They had conducted the

blitzgrig extremely successfully so far

for the attack on the Soviet Union. 3.5

million Viamat soldiers were ready

divided into three army groups north,

central and south. Army group north was

to advance on Lennengrad, army group

center on Moscow and army group south on

Kief and then on the caucuses. Thus, all

the economic and political centers of

the Soviet Union should be taken in a

lightning campaign.

Since 3:45 that Sunday morning, German

units had been advancing. 3 million

German soldiers were moving rapidly east

in forced

marches. Right from the start, the

German veh took thousands of prisoners

of war. There was still a certainty of

victory.

Themat succeeded very quickly in the

first days in breaking through the

Soviet defense lines and destroying the

Soviet air force while it was still on

the ground. And so the Germans the

penetrated very quickly in their first

weeks to the

east. However, with every kilometer it

penetrated further east, the supply

lines became longer and the Soviet

resistance became stronger.

From the start, the civilian population

was also targeted by the fighting

troops. The German news reels showed

nothing of this in the first days of the

war. They were convinced that they could

crush Soviet Russia, the Colossus, with

feet of clay with one blow.

In the summer of 1941, the Biamat was at

the zenith of its capabilities. It had

combat experience. It had learned

lessons. It had long training periods.

It had improved armorament and

ammunition. And the initial experience

was we were vastly superior to the Red

Army.

The invasion of the neighboring country

was sold to the German population as a

preventive war. On the morning of June

22nd, propaganda minister Joseph Gerbles

in a radio message delivered a

proclamation from Adolf Hitler.

Har and

Schlson in the hunt

For Hitler, it was always clear that the

war against the Soviet Union would come,

the great ideological confrontation

between national socialism with

vulturism. At the same time, in Hitler's

world, there were also economic and

strategic reasons for attacking the

Soviet

Union. He failed to defeat Great

Britain. So he thought, let's first

defeat the danger in the

east. And then afterwards, Hitler wanted

to move all his forces to the west.

First against Great Britain and then in

a big world war against the US.

The dictator believed that the campaign

against the Soviet Union would last

about 22 weeks. His generals assumed

even less, only 8 to 17 weeks.

Hitler regarded his opponent Joseph

Stalin as an opponent to be taken

seriously. The Soviet dictator was a

clever head, a blood hound whose blood

regiment of bulsheism had to be put down

as soon as

possible. Stalin's Red Army was only

partially operational after the Great

Terror in the mid 1930s. Stalin had

assassinated almost the entire military

and party leadership to ensure his

autocracy. Those who rallied around him

initially quite rightly assumed that the

man's hand did not tremble, that he

could handle any crisis and that he had

no qums about using force against

anyone. So that initially the followers

voluntarily subordinated themselves to

him. In fact, this was a dictator who

played the henchmen off against each

other with the means of power in his

hands and controlled the secret service.

And he established something like a

desperatism which even the closest

members in the leadership circle were

afraid of.

Ever since the October Revolution,

Soviet Russia had been regarded as the

worst threat to the West. In the

meantime, it had become a dictatorship

with a personality cult focused entirely

on Stalin.

The Soviet Union at the time, by the

way, not only in Germany, was actually

something like the evil

empire. And so this war for many was a

war against the arch enemy of the West,

the civilized world. After a short

period of getting used to the fact that

now that the Hitler style impact had

ended, the vast majority of Germans

absolutely approved of this campaign.

Absolute good. When Adolf Hitler

delivered a speech to a group of officer

candidates at the Berlin Sports Palace

in early December 1940, he had already

been working solidly for weeks on a

blueprint for war against the Soviet

Union. He had also long since informed

his generals of the inevitability of the

attack. He also said it was necessary to

create living space in the east and at

the same time defeat Germany's arch

enemy. While in Western Europe it was

more or less clashes between two armies.

In the east it was a clash between two

ideologies and not only between two

ideologies but also between two

societies. That's how it was

interpreted. And in order to make the

Soviet regime collapse, the Nazis

believed they had to specifically

eliminate the Jews and the communists as

proponents of that

regime. were formulated in advance.

Political officers, for example,

assigned to Red Army units, if seized in

combat or resistance, are in principle

to be finished off immediately with a

weapon. The court marshal decree also

exempted the killing of civilians by

Vermach soldiers from punishment.

Officers reactions ranged from outspoken

approval to reluctant acceptance.

However, resistance was comparatively

low. As always, of course, there was a

material moment. The generals were lured

by the fact that they were promised huge

latafundia in this vast country and this

was then supposed to destroy

da. Many of these generals went along

with it aware that they were doing

something forbidden. So from the very

beginning the German generals

compromised went along with the crimes.

Colonel general funau one of the diehard

Nazi leaders even justified and defended

it publicly. Field marshal manstein said

that a bolevik political officer was not

a comrade and that one could shoot him

without hesitation.

To enforce Hitler's barbaric concept of

war, the Hamburg Reserve Police

Battalion 102 was also detached. Their

official mission to secure the rear

areas. Their real mission to assist the

SS Anzat Grupen in genocide in occupied

Poland and Russia. They shot tens of

thousands or deported them to

concentration camps.

Resistance was expected by the Nazi

rulers mainly from communists and from

Jews.

And very quickly this order was

interpreted as carrying out ethnic

cleansing against the Jewish population

and the communist intelligencia.

In Moscow, Joseph Stalin had to face the

truth. Adolf Hitler had taken him by

surprise. Nazi Germany and the USSR were

at

war.

Horrified Soviet citizens learned about

the invasion by the Vmach from

newspapers. They heard nothing from

Stalin for the first few weeks after the

invasion. The dictator left it to his

deputy Vakislav Molotov to inform the

population about the attack. The

numerous warnings of his agents which

Stalin had dismissed as faints and

deceptive maneuvers now turned out to

his astonishment to be true.

It deeply shocked Stalin that someone

could be so stupid as to open a

two-front war. He completely misjudged

that. And that's why, interestingly

enough, he was much more distrustful of

the British and the French than he was

of Hitler because he saw Hitler as an

authoritarian ruler and dictator who

would act in exactly the same way as he

would have in his place. That's why I

think Stalin for the first time in his

life was really surprised.

Nevertheless, contrary to rumors, the

dictator kept his nerve. Mobilization,

however, was slow to get off the ground.

The Red Army, which had been bled dry,

lacked experienced commanders.

Stallion was in control from the very

first day of the war, and he organized

the defense. He was, as always, a

resolute ruler, and by no means panicked

or hysterical. That would not have

suited the man at all.

On July 3rd, Stalin, who as Supreme

Commander now called himself General

Isimo, spoke to the Soviet people in a

radio address to prepare them for the

Great Patriotic War.

[Music]

[Music]

This had a great effect. Not only that,

most Soviet citizens heard the

dictator's voice for the first time, he

basically never appeared in public.

They heard for the first time this man

with the heavy Georgian accent, who

spoke Russian with mistakes, who

addressed his compatriots and

immediately used this formula, brothers

and sisters. There you see the old fox

again who recognized exactly what he had

to do in which situation and what was

needed now, and who could unhesitatingly

throw all ideological reservations

overboard if he could get any advantages

from it.

Meanwhile, at Adolf Hitler's

headquarters in Oba Zaltzburg in

Bavaria, reports were coming in of

victory. At this point, the German

troops had already advanced more than

500 km toward Moscow. The German

soldiers did not yet know what kind of

war their leader had planned for them

and what role he had assigned to them in

this campaign of destruction. Many of

them did not see any great danger in

their imminent deployment to the front.

G Bugelman, a young lieutenant from

Pibborn, received his marching orders.

Then a year earlier, his only brother

had been killed in France. As the last

son of his family, he was not assigned

to combat duty, but was put in charge of

leading a supply train. The soldiers

were still in good spirits, heading for

a foreign

country. In Private Müller's war

experience, the central thing was the

fight, the boredom, the waiting, the

marching, the foreign culture, even the

cheerful hours spent with comrades, the

pride in one's military achievements, in

one's successes, all that was in the

foreground. The awareness that this was

a criminal war, a war of aggression was

of course not there at all. So the war

was also an adventure, a journey. The

vast majority of Germans had not

traveled, had never left Germany, had

never left their village before. At the

beginning of their advance, the soldiers

also received a friendly welcome in some

areas, especially in the Baltic states,

parts of Belleris, and in Ukraine, where

the population hoped for better times

after the end of Stalinist terror. But

the joy of liberation was disappointing.

Soon the high command relieved the

soldiers of any duty of responsibility

and declared that feeding the

impoverished population was a

misunderstood humanity.

In Ukraine, the Germans were welcomed

very positively because they were seen

as liberators from the Soviet yoke which

was also a foreign rule for the

Ukrainian

people. The almost unimpeded advance

allowed German troops to penetrate deep

into the interior of the country. Thus,

they quickly succeeded in encircling

large areas.

Characteristic of the first phase of

operation Barbarosa were the so-called

encirclement battles. That is German

tank forces had surrounded larger bodies

of troops of the Red Army in pinser

attacks and thus encircled. They were

closed off from

supplies. And so there were huge numbers

of prisoners in the first weeks and

months of the war.

In one of the first of these

encirclement battles around the

Bellarusian capital of Minsk, about

325,000 soldiers of the Red Army became

German prisoners of

war. The next objective in the advance

of army groups centered towards Moscow

was Smolinsk. Here the Vey encountered

fierce resistance.

[Applause]

Today when we look at the German advance

in the Soviet Union, we are dazzled by

the news real pictures. We see the

encirclement battles. We see the huge

streets full of Soviet prisoners of war.

We see smiling German soldiers. But the

Germans suffered immense losses in the

advance. And this veh was actually

shrinking and shrinking because while

many Red Army soldiers went into

captivity, many also fought to the last

bullet. Contrary to what the news reels

claim, it actually took two months

before the German troops finally decided

the battle in their favor.

The Soviet leadership could not find an

effective strategy against the

lightningquick advance of German troops.

The huge mistakes made by the general

often benefited the Vmach.

Stalin made the mistake of simply

forbidding army leaders to retreat. As a

result, they were constantly surrounded

and huge army units were destroyed. They

surrendered by the 100,00ands because

they realized that they couldn't use

their military skills at all. They had

no weapons, no boots, no uniforms. Their

officers ran away or didn't lead them at

all. As a result, the number of

prisoners of war increased

rapidly. 300,000 Red Army soldiers were

trapped in the Smolinsk basin. The

Germans mercilessly crammed them into

very confined spaces. The prisoners of

war suffered from hunger and thirst.

Soon epidemics such as typhus were

rampant in the

camps. In the end, the veh failed to do

everything that should have been

required for humane accommodation and

this led to the biggest mass death in

the German sphere of influence in

1941. 2.2 2 million died and a total of

about 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of

war perished in German captivity.

It's believed that 50% or even over 50%

of Soviet prisoners of war died in

German hands. They were shot or they

starved or they worked until they

dropped.

[Music]

Those who were lucky were supplied from

surrounding villages. Often impoverished

farmers gave the prisoners their last

bit of bread. A German officer noted in

his diary. There was nothing to

eat. Not even water. Many died. They

were finally given dry macaroni to eat,

which they pounced on madly.

Of all the crimes for which the Vmach

was responsible, I think the treatment

of Soviet prisoners of war was the

greatest crime.

Most Vammock generals did not feel

responsible for the mass deaths in the

German camps. Responsibility for the

conditions in each prison camp lay with

the respective commander. Thus, the

negligence was passed on from the upper

ranks to the overburdened officers.

In the camps, people were at the mercy

of their guards as to whether they lived

or died. Systematically, all those

capable of working were registered and

publicly stripped. The circumcised among

them were immediately identified as Jews

and deported or shot. In many camps, the

guards behaved like a sadistic master

race. Beatings and severe abuse were

commonplace.

The idea that Germany was a superior

power was widespread. The phrase the

world shall be healed by the German

essence had been known for a long time.

What was new, however, was this

racialization of prejudices, where one

spoke of Slavic subhumans and waged a

war of extermination.

In the summer of 1941, SS Chief Hinrik

Himmler visited a camp with Soviet

prisoners of war near Minsk. When he

witnessed a mass shooting, he lamented

the strain that such actions would have

on the perpetrators. Soon, he would give

orders to begin forced gassing and

setting up extermination camps. Not only

were prisoners of war victims of the

task forces, they systematically also

killed Jewish civilians.

These were the extermination squads that

followed the troops who had first

received vague orders which eventually

leaned more and more in the direction of

shooting all Jews. All men at first but

then also women and

children everywhere in the rear areas.

The ve supported theat krupin as well as

the police battalions assigned to them

in their killing spree. In addition to

Jews, political opponents, Roma and

Cinti, others considered unworthy of

life and Nazi jargon were also

eliminated. The SS troops were not the

only ones who brought terror to the

country. Very soldiers also participated

in the atrocities of the German murder

squads.

the army groups that marched into the

Soviet Union and the armies which then

always included SS units which were

divisions that is part of this army and

therefore the veh fought side by side

with these SS units. So the Viamat

officers corrupted themselves by making

common cause with these people.

In this war everything was permitted.

The murder of women and children became

part of everyday life. Civilization was

suspended. Horror was unleashed.

Inhibitions disappeared. Ordinary men

became mass murderers.

Where killing was no longer forbidden

but ordered and where it was morally

justified. They said, "What you're doing

is not bad. You're doing it for a good

cause." And where men knew that their

friends, families, wives, and children

could not see what they were doing, they

did it. Not everyone did it, but a lot

of them thinking nobody's going to find

out. I don't think the Nazis could have

organized these murder excesses at home

because then the man would have had to

cross much larger thresholds.

Serious war crimes were also committed

by the Germans on the southeastern

front.

In the battle for the Ukrainian capital,

Kiev, the Red Army planted explosive

devices in several buildings before

retreating. The explosions killed

several hundred members of the armed

forces. The nationalist Ukrainians had

welcomed the Germans as liberators. Now,

together with Vermacht and SS officers,

they demanded retaliation for the

Bolevik attacks. The troops then

targeted Jewish civilians, especially

the elderly, women, and children.

Under the pretext of evacuation, the

Jews were taken out of the city. On

September 29th and 30th, 1941, an SS

Enzut Group systematically murdered

33,771 people with machine guns at

Babiar. After the massacre, the Vmach

secured the area and blew up parts of

the ravine to bury the piles of corpses

forever. After the blood bath, Enzat's

group se in a report explicitly praised

the excellent cooperation of the

veh. A lot of people went along with it

in the group because the leader said

this is what's going to be done now and

you didn't want to let your comrades

down. So you went along with it and

because you were in a male hierarchy of

the military and you can see this

everywhere in wars. The moment such

military hierarchies are associated with

everything being allowed, the violence

escalates.

On August 27th, Hitler arrived in

Ukraine for a visit with the troops. A

field airport had been built near where

the city of Oman had been bloodily

conquered. The dictator was welcomed

enthusiastically. Despite the high

number of casualties and wounded, the

Vamach soldiers still wildly cheered

their leader. The soldiers were

convinced that the war would soon be

won.

Hitler was the central person without

whom such a war in the Soviet Union was

not even imaginable. He was the link

between ideology, state, military, and

party. The soldiers saw things

differently in a way that seems crude to

us today. They separated ideology and

Hitler. Hitler was seen by many as the

father of the fatherland to whom one was

also loyal to whom also sworn oath. And

then there was the evil party. Of course

we know today that that's insane to

separate the two. You can't separate

them at all. But to the soldiers, Hitler

was seen as a positive figure for an

astonishingly long time in the war. This

is of course an auxiliary construction

to also explain why one continued to

fight. Kemp Italian dictator Benito

Mussolini had also arrived to see for

himself the progress of the campaign in

which his troops were also involved.

Hitler informed the surprised Duche that

the conquest of Moscow was no longer a

priority but Lennengrad was. Exactly

what Hitler planned to do was

communicated to the commanders of Army

Group North in the secret command

document of August 28th. The

Leningraders had to be destroyed by

starving them to

death. After surrounding the city, any

evacuation by the civilian population

must be prevented, if necessary, by

using weapons.

Behind this, of course, was the

calculation that a city of millions like

Lannenrad could not have been supplied

at all. The Viamat and the Germans did

not want that at all. They didn't want

to get the civilians on their side. If

they had wanted that, they would have

fixed it. But they didn't want to. And

that's why the decision was made to

surround the city and starve it

out. Of course, there have been sieges

since ancient times. There's also been

starvation in besieged cities since

ancient times. But the idea of now

starving a city for months and then

actually starving the population to

death, that's a unique event, at least

for modern times.

On September 8th, the siege ring closed

around the city and its 3.3 million

inhabitants. All supply lines were cut

off. Thus began one of the most

perfidious crimes of the Vermacht. The

German Luftvafa dropped incendiary bombs

over the city. Tons of food was burned.

Soon a large part of the population

suffered from

hunger. An unbelievable number of people

starved to death became cannibals.

Terrible scenes took place in

Lannenrad. If you meet older people in

Petersburg who had experienced this,

they cannot forget it for the rest of

their lives. They have never seen a

German But they can't forget how

terrible it was and how it changed

social relations within weeks because

people couldn't think of anything else

but the next piece of bread.

After the onset of winter, the mass

death planned by the army high command

began. Many froze to death because they

had no fuel left. But the worst was the

hunger. According to estimates, one in

three Leningraders starve to death

during the 900day siege. more than a

million people.

Stalin cynically exploited them for his

regime by not doing much to ensure the

survival of these people in the city

because he knew it played into his hands

when the Nazis treated the population in

this way.

Meanwhile, Army Group Center continued

to march on Moscow. The Soviet capital

was supposed to have been conquered by

August, but by the end of the month, the

breakthrough had still not been

achieved. Nervousness began to spread in

the Vemach High

Command. To relieve the overstretched

supply lines, the OKW released whole

swats of land for looting. To prevent

this, the Red Army also set fire to many

villages. During the course of the

winter, the population suffered severe

famine and tens of thousands died.

The life of the enemy didn't count for

much. You also got to see how the Red

Army waged war with the huge numbers of

casualties they operated. How the Red

Army kept attacking their own positions,

their own machine gun fire, death

defying. This creates an image that the

lives of the citizens of the Soviet

Union didn't actually count.

Those who went home on leave saw their

own family as if it was a different

world. On the surface, the idol in the

garden at home was undisturbed. But the

father of the family didn't even take

off his vehic uniform at home. The war

was also finding a way into the

immediate family circle. Even the

youngest practiced military drills to

please their father.

The soldiers who came home on leaf from

the eastern front thought that the home

they were in was completely surreal.

They suddenly came to an area where

Easter was celebrated and Christmas and

there were little children singing and

the world was still fine even though

there were bombing

rates and they couldn't talk about their

experiences in that environment. They

couldn't tell their wives about their

bodies being torn to pieces, about their

brains being blown out, about mass

shootings of Jews. That scene at all.

The frustrated Vey units became

increasingly ruthless, but a lightning

victory failed to materialize. Their

proven strategy threatened not to work

this time. In fact, the motorized units

of Hega's group had only about a third

of their inventory left. Winter was

approaching. Villages were ruthlessly

looted and burned to the

ground. Many peasants hid in the

forests. In order to survive, they

joined forces with scattered Red Army

soldiers and guerrillas to form partisan

groups. Contrary to Soviet propaganda,

these mly groups were poorly equipped

with few weapons and little ammunition.

Nevertheless, they hit the Vmach hard.

The officers of the Viamata and the

general staff believed that they could

wage a blitzk there just as they had

done in France and other countries in

Europe. But they had not thought at all

about whether there were actually roads

in the Soviet Union. And then they

discovered that the Soviet Union did

have a road network, but it was very

primitive. There were these so-called

great rolling roads. They connected the

big cities and went through the Soviet

Union, leaving thousands of kilometers

of no man's land behind them. They

didn't control that at all. So, they

drove in with these columns of tanks,

but they left behind them areas that

they hadn't conquered at all, areas that

they just drove through.

Partisan sabotage attacks carried out

from these rear areas repeatedly set the

vehic. The wounded from these attacks

could often only be cared for

inadequately as supplies did not reach

them in time. Meanwhile, on October 8th,

Hitler let the domestic and foreign

press know that the Soviet Union had

finally been

defeated. In October, the Vey still

achieved one major success. Then the

advance came to a standstill.

The beer map was actually finished after

the last big battle of the Briansken

Viasma Basin in October of 41. And the

troops said, "Enough. Stop. Winter

position. Bring supplies forward. Bring

winter clothing forward. We can't go any

further." And it was the army general of

staff, not Hitler, who said, "Never

mind." Even as they knew about the dire

situation of the soldiers, they still

had to make one last big effort to take

Moscow.

The losses of the German divisions

increased daily, but the military

leadership didn't develop any

alternatives to its failed strategy. The

toll of blood paid by the soldiers for

the failures of their leaders was high.

More and more cemeteries filled the

landscapes. A field chaplain described

the mood of his superior after a funeral

in the field. The colonel's face has

changed in the last few days. He stands

silently in front of the long groves of

graves. There lies my old guard.

Actually, we belong there, too. Then it

would be over.

There was a high degree of frustration

among the soldiers. Everything took much

longer. The weather conditions were

getting worse. You stood in the mud. The

nutritional conditions were getting bad.

There were no longer sufficient or only

very intermittent supplies and by no

means was the war going to be over in

two or three months.

In midocctober 1941, the Russian autumn

set in and with it came the

rains. Lieutenant Bugulman's supply

train was also advancing slower and

slower. The so-called Rasputa slowed the

advance of the Germans with rain and

mud. Little by little, all the dirt

roads of Eastern Europe turned into an

impassible quagmire.

The German advance came to a halt

shortly before Moscow. Because by then,

the supply routes were simply

overextended too far. And besides, the

Germans already had huge losses. By the

end of 1941, the Germans had already

lost about a million men, dead, wounded,

or captured. There were losses that the

Viamat leadership and Hitler had not

planned for.

In Moscow, Stalin knew how to use the

time he gained. Thousands of civilians

built barricades and tank trenches. Then

the strategic reserves from Siberia

arrived and marched from Red Square

directly to the front. Meanwhile,

reports from German aerial

reconnaissance units about massive troop

deployments in the Moscow area were

dismissed by the German leadership as

ghosts. Stalin entrusted the leadership

of the life-saving offensive to a hero

of the Soviet Union, General Guyorgi

Zukov. On the other side of the world,

Franklin D. Roosevelt adhered to the

principle of good neighborliness and

considered any imperialist expansion of

his country as

unreasonable. Thus did the US president

become the antagonist of the

expansionist axis powers. Roosevelt knew

that sooner or later his country would

have to intervene in the conflict, but

the majority of his countrymen were

against entering the war. The main

tendency in the United States at that

time was to say, "We have completely

different problems to solve in our own

country, especially of an economic

nature. We need everything now, but not

war. We don't need to enter here." And

Roosevelt too had actually said quite

clearly that he wanted to put an end to

this American imperialist policy.

In particular, the US felt threatened by

Japan. The Japanese had continued to arm

themselves and had been waging a war

against China for years in violation of

international law. Finally, the United

States suspended all trade relations

with Japan and imposed an oil embargo.

They responded with a secret plan of

attack on a US base in the Pacific.

On the Japanese side, there were

definitely military people who felt that

they had really been backed into a

corner. For these military men, there

had to be this attack on Pearl Harbor at

all costs in order to free themselves

from this feeling of being backed into a

corner. In that sense, Pearl Harbor was

clearly liberating strike.

Located nearly 3,700 km southwest of the

California coast, Pearl Harbor had been

home to the US Pacific Fleet since

1940. Undetected, a Japanese fleet

approached the Hawaiian Islands. The

Kido Bhai had covered 6,000 km. It was

December 7th, 1941. And at 10 minutes to

6, the Japanese aircraft carriers moved

into position. Half an hour later, 185

planes took off. It took the attackers

an hour and a half to reach their

destination.

It was the first time in human history

that an attack had been conducted this

way with a total of six aircraft

carriers, a combined attack from the

sea, but just with units attacking from

the air.

140 ships, including eight battleships

and 29 destroyers, were anchored in

Pearl Harbor at the time, but they were

considered obsolete. Some had already

been in service during the First World

War. Their relocation to the middle of

the Pacific was intended to send a

message to a belligerent Japan.

This deployment of the fleet to Pearl

Harbor was a very clear statement, a

very clear signal from the United States

that said, "We're not going to

completely sit idly by and watch what's

happening here in Asia and what Japan is

doing in Asia. Even if we don't directly

intervene militarily now, at least we're

showing a presence in this way."

At 7:48 a.m., the first Japanese fighter

planes attack, followed by formations of

dive bombers and torpedo planes. The

message to mission control, Torah,

Torah, Tora, was the agreed signal that

the surprise had succeeded. The Japanese

attackers documented their success with

a camera as the first bombs hit the Ford

Island airfield. Shocked and surprised,

the soldiers and sailors came to the

realization, "This is not a drill.

Washington. Washington had anticipated

that sooner or later there would

probably be armed conflict in Asia.

However, it had more strongly expected

that it would happen somewhere in

Southeast Asia. But Japan had not been

figured to actually attack the heart of

the Anglo-American presence in the

Asia-Pacific. That is the Pearl Harbor

naval base which was armed to the teeth.

More than 2,400 American soldiers died,

19 warships were sunk or damaged, and

around 200 aircraft were destroyed. US

soldiers were forced to watch helplessly

as the Japanese reduced their huge naval

base to rubble within 2 hours. Pearl

Harbor became the most bitter defeat in

American naval history. The next day,

President Roosevelt declared war on

Japan.

On the Japanese side, there was a

misconception because they had a

misconception about the American

politicians. They actually thought

Americans, the white people in

Washington, they are somehow weak and if

they suffer such a drastic, heavy

surprise blow, then they will give in.

Then they will enter into negotiations

and that's where they were very wrong.

Yesterday, December

7th,

1941, a date which will

live in

infamy. The United States of

America was suddenly and deliberately

attacked by naval and air forces of the

Empire of Japan. The

facts of yesterday and

today speak for

themselves with confidence in our armed

forces with the unbounding determination

of our

people. We will gain the inevitable

triumph. So help us God.

Hitler too was surprised by Japan's

attack. The dictator kept the promise he

had made to his ally in case of war. On

December 11th, the Third Reich declared

war on the US. The European war now

became a world war.

Pearl Harbor. The interesting thing

about Pearl Harbor is that it was not

the US that declared war on the German

Reich. Rather, it was actually Hitler

who reacted immediately after Pearl

Harbor, who immediately arranged for

American ships to be sunk and who

declared war on the US. For him, it was

actually a welcomed event to create very

clear fronts that sent out a very clear

message. On the one hand, Germany stood

on the side of Japan against the

Anglo-Americans and the Soviet Union. So

very clear front lines were created.

The front in the Soviet Union at the

time was 50 km from Moscow city

[Music]

limits. On December 5th, the Red Army

struck back. The offensive hit the

surprised German troops with full force.

Just a day earlier, the general staff

had announced that the Red Army was at

the time not in a position to attack

Army Group Center.

The biggest enemy for the Germans was

first of all the Russian geography, the

Russian winter. The problem that a huge

army could not be supplied over huge

distances. Logistically, it didn't work.

The Germans didn't even have winter

equipment because they thought that the

war would be over in September of 1941.

And the Soviet troops used that to their

advantage. By mid December, the Red Army

had averted the threat of Moscow's

encirclement and was gaining ground on

its side. With the weather at 40° below

zero, only a few German soldiers were

equipped with sufficient winter

clothing. 2 and a half thousand of them

died every day.

Moscow. Moscow. The counter offensive of

the Red Army. What foreign armies east,

the German intelligence service wrote on

the eve of this offensive. An offensive

is not to be expected. The Germans

simply could not imagine that the Red

Army would do that. They also didn't

understand what reserves the Red Army

still had. They didn't understand this

country either. They had no real

knowledge. Even for the intelligence

service, Russia remained a foreign

country. And what critical voices that

did exist in 1941 were pushed to the

side.

Unfased. On December 18th, Adolf Hitler

gave the weakened troops the order to

fanatically persevere. At the same time,

the dictator forbade any retreat. He

fired dissenting generals, some of whom

beat him to the punch with requests to

resign.

On December 19th, Hitler finally seized

supreme command of the army and relieved

the previous commanderin-chief Veon

Brahich of his

command. On the home front, an ideal

world was created. Those who were

wealthy, like the Hankle family of

merchants in Hamburg, spent Christmas

with their loved ones. The father,

Hunts, had not yet been called up. Three

years later, the family would receive

his last letter from the Eastern Front.

Hans Henkle would die fighting near

Budapest, but the Germans still had no

idea of their impending defeat.

[Music]

On the home front, it didn't matter. If

you watch news reels from December 1941,

from January 1942, you realized you

couldn't actually tell what was going

on.

that you were fighting somewhere in a

frozen area outside Moscow for villages

that you had never heard of.

The situation for the German troops was

hopeless. The temperature was around

-40°. Rifles and guns jammed. Engine oil

and gasoline congealed. The arms and

legs of the soldiers holding out froze.

The German attack on the Soviet Union,

Operation Barbarosa, had failed.

This caused a shock effect among the

soldiers. Now they saw the weakness of

the Red Army. It was all lies. It wasn't

true at all. The Red Army was well

equipped. There were soldiers who were

brought in from the east of Siberia in

ski suits. They realized that they were

being burned there, that they had to

walk around in women's fur coats, and

that they were cannon foder. The aura of

the invincibility of the Viamach was

gone. And I think most of the soldiers

in the Viamak knew in the winter of

1941 that this was going to go wrong.

Gugelman's hard-hit supply unit had also

been stationed outside Moscow since the

end of November. Unexpectedly, the

lieutenant was ordered back to

Potterborn for a new assignment. The

journey home took him via Smolinsk and

Berlin. He was on the road for a week in

a hospital train. Arriving in

Potterborn, the horrified officer

learned that his entire unit had been

destroyed in a battle outside Moscow

shortly after his departure.

The Leen's realm in Austin, the living

space in the east, had turned into a

hostile no man's land. Hitler's war was

sinking into frost, snow, and ice.

Iron.

[Applause]

[Music]

We shall defend our island whatever the

task may be. We shall fight on the

beaches. We shall fight on the landing

grounds. We shall fight in the fields

and in the streets. We shall fight in

the hills. We shall never surrender.

[Music]

Magglyun

away. The United States of America was

suddenly and deliberately attacked by

naval and air forces of the Empire of

Japan. We will gain the inevitable

triumph. So help us God.

[Applause]

[Music]

here.

[Applause]

Star. The Nazis entered this war under a

rather childish delusion that they were

going to bomb everybody else and nobody

was going to bomb them.

[Music]

[Music]

Super cool.

[Music]

[Music]

On January 13th, 1942, a German

submarine appeared off the Atlantic

coast of the United States. Together

with two others, they took up positions

near New York

City. The group had just completed two

weeks of travel. Within sight of the

Manhattan skyline, the boats went on the

attack. The long range submarines had an

easy time of it. US shipping was

completely unprepared, assuming that the

east coast was beyond the reach of the

Germans. Unprotected, the freigherss

were at the mercy of

torpedoes. The Germans, after all, had

declared war on the US on December 11,

1941. And then the question was how to

actually reach the US, how could they

exert an influence on the US? How could

they attack it? The only weapon that

Germans had for this were their

submarines, and Kunitz, the commander of

the submarines, was quite pleased with

the opportunity to find new hunting

grounds for his submarines. He had

rightly assumed that the Americans had

peaceime merchant shipping on their east

coast and they were of course very easy

to attack with submarines. And so he

went five submarines at first, then more

and more to the American east coast and

also to the Caribbean. and their

hundreds of ships or about two million

gross tons were sunk in the first half

of

1942. This was one of the very great

successes of the German Navy. Some go so

far as to say that this whole operation

palenlag was a second Pearl

Harbor. Successes like these were most

welcome to Nazi propaganda. The news

reels reported extensively on German

Ubot heroes.

[Music]

[Music]

York. Of course, Nazi propaganda was

always looking for images, for stories,

for

personalizations. We know all this from

today's media technology. And in

principle, it was no different with Nazi

propaganda. What stories can we tell? an

infantry man lying in a trench firing

somewhere. That's not a story I can

tell. But if I can measure performance,

then I can tell stories. Then I can

award medals. It's like

sports. And that's the case with

submariners. How much tonnage did they

sink? I can measure military

performance. That's why submariners are

celebrated as heroes by propaganda. I

can sell them well. They're young.

They're dynamic. They're fighters. They

go for it. So I can generate enthusiasm

among the youth unlike the grand mass of

the army and the infantry. And the navy

also plays a much bigger role

politically through propaganda than it

actually plays

militarily. On the other side of the

continent, America was suddenly

threatened by danger from the deep. On

February 23rd, a Japanese submarine

appeared off the California coast and

shelled a refinery near Santa Barbara.

For the first time, the US experienced

an attack on its

mainland. Japan's militaristic

government was making propagandistic

profit from the foolhardy attack. Ever

since the Imperial Navy succeeded in

striking a devastating blow against the

most important US naval base in the

Pacific in December, Japanese military

had been prone to excessive hubris. But

exaggerated claims were also being made

in the United

States. In the American press after

Pearl Harbor, there was actually of

course exaggerations.

But there was definitely this idea that

yes, it's possible that the yellow peril

is coming. It was possible that the

Japanese could also somehow land on the

west coast of

America. And this fear did exist. As far

as the Japanese were concerned, there

was never any thought of somehow trying

to make a serious landing attempt on the

American continent.

There were isolated pin pricks on the

California coast. That's where the

Japanese Navy had sent submarines. But

it was more to send the message, if we

wanted to, we could reach you. And if we

wanted to, we could attack you here. But

we're not doing

it. It was the same situation with

Australia. Although there were also

those in the Japanese military who said,

"The next step must actually be to take

Australia. We have taken all of

Southeast Asia. It's not enough that we

bomb Darwin in the north of Australia.

No, we also have to take Australia

because sooner or later, Australia

represents the most important base for

the Americans in the Asia-Pacific

region. Using the Blitzkrieg example of

their German ally, Japanese troops had

quickly invaded numerous countries in

Southeast Asia by December. The

Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, and

Singapore were also under their control

by

January, as were numerous Pacific

islands. Now, the Japanese were

preparing to seize other Western

European colonies such as Burma and the

East Indies. Asia, for the Asians, was

their battlecry, but for many Japanese

nationalists, it served as a mere

pretext for these campaigns of conquest.

Japan's plan was first to wage a very

offensive, lightning fast war in

Southeast Asia to conquer as much

territory as possible as quickly as

possible in the Southeast Asia-Pacific

region. Then to hold on to these in a

second more defensive phase, then to

consolidate and then to force the

Americans and also Great Britain and the

West into a negotiated peace if possible

on Japanese terms.

The British crown colony of Hong Kong

fell in early December. Japanese forces

outnumbered the Empire's colonial troops

almost 4 to1. They quickly gained air

superiority over the city from the Pearl

River Delta. Soon the Allied formations

had to retreat. Then Japanese troops

occupied the

city. During the so-called Black

Christmas, the civilian population

endured immeasurable suffering.

Arbitrary murders and by the occupiers

were the order of the day. Within 4

months, Nippon brought all of Southeast

Asia as well as much of the Pacific

Ocean with about 450 million people

under its rule. The Japanese Empire had

never been larger. On the other side of

the world, people were highly pleased

with these developments, even though no

one in the Reich Chancellory in Berlin

had known about Japan's plans in

advance. Shortly after the attack on

Pearl Harbor, Adolf Hitler awarded a

medal to the Imperial Ambassador.

[Music]

[Music]

had relatively quickly and relatively

well ingratiated himself to Adolf Hitler

as Oshima himself had written and

communicated. He also had the feeling

that he had quite a good connection to

the Nazi regime and to Adolf Hitler

himself. Of course, we always have a bit

of an idea. There was a kind of global

axis warfare. That is the excess powers

together created a master plan on how to

conquer the world and had coordinated it

perfectly. It wasn't like that in

reality. Even when we think of the

invasion of Poland by the Vermach, it is

of course clear that the Japanese army

looked very closely at what and how the

Vmach acted from the Japanese side. This

first blitz creek which was presented

here by the Germans was studied

meticulously and examined at very

closely. The Japanese military atache

obtained corresponding reports there and

also had them prepared and transmitted

to Tokyo and the Japanese term for

blitzkrief was a literal translation.

In order to defeat the enemy together,

the US was portrayed by the Axis powers

in a grotesqually distorted manner as a

politically unstable and bankrupt

country. In actual fact, Roosevelt's New

Deal had created an enormous economic

boom in the

[Music]

States.

Fore speech.

[Music]

the pictures of the global economic

crisis taken 10 years earlier were

intended to show the supposed state of

the nation. Not only was the population

led to believe that the American economy

was in the doldrums, the Nazi leadership

apparently believed this as well.

One of the crucial questions after all

is why Hitler declared war on the US on

December 11, 1941. And it seems that

there was something about Hitler's

perception at that time in December of

1941 because he believed that the US

could not sustain a long war even

economically. On the whole, of course,

from today's vantage point, one could

make the case that Hitler and many

others, the German leadership, the

German intelligence service and others

massively underestimated the economic

power of the United States. There were

voices, but only a few who said that if

we go to war with the US, then we can no

longer win the war. There were those

people. There were also military

officers Fritz Tutt for example as

former minister of armaments who was

very critical in the fall of 1941 who

said if the US enters the war then we

have no chance there economically but

most of Hitler's advisers massively

underestimated

this German arms industry was in full

swing Nazi propaganda euphorically hyped

the war- related boom as an armament's

miracle the upswing was initiated by

Fritz Toot, the Minister of Armaments.

However, when Tot became critical of the

course of the war, a rift with Hitler

ensued. On February 8th, 1942, the civil

engineer was killed in a plane crash at

the Rasenborg airport near the Furer's

headquarters,

Vulchants. Hitler ordered a state

funeral andostimously awarded Toteston

of the National Socialist Reich, the

Tutonic Order. A few hours after Tot's

death, Adolf Hitler appointed his

favorite architect as his

successor. Ibach was a gifted manager

and above all, he had the advantage of

having direct access to Hitler. He was

able to achieve things organizationally

that Fritz Tot had also conceived, but

also always wanted, had also set on the

right path, but only could achieve

that.

His relationship with Hitler was a very

special one. So he got the recognition

became armament's minister with a

spectrum of control that Tot had never

dreamed of and he was capable in

organizing armaments. But this

armament's miracle that many talked

about had not really been a miracle but

was a very normal process of switching

from a peacetime economy to a wartime

economy.

Albert spare succeeded in increasing

production output in some areas of

armaments. He also knew how to market

himself and his successes effectively

for propaganda purposes. In fact, German

armaments lagged far behind the

achievements of the Allied armaments

manufacturers. A fact that Hitler also

studiously

ignored. The most important first

measures that took during his first

weeks were above all displays of staging

and propaganda. So now he had the

so-called homeront propaganda which

systematically referred to the

production miracles and the achievements

of the German armaments industry and

which then very soon became intoxicated

with its own successors.

[Music]

in view of these supposed successes.

Even the majority of the traditionally

left-wing working class agreed with the

[Applause]

regime. For a long time, it was assumed

that the workers movement, especially in

the cities where there was a high

proportion of workers, actually had a

particularly high level of resistance to

the

Nazis. Obviously, that's not what we

think today anymore. The fact is that

the Nazi dictatorship was a dictatorship

of consent, a consensus dictatorship.

There was certainly resistance, but that

was clearly a smaller part of the

civilian population. And there was a

high level of willingness, especially

because many who had actually lived in

economically difficult circumstances in

the 1920s or at the beginning of the

1930s were subjectively better off and

actually benefited from the racist

system. And it was not just through

rearmament and through the boosting of

arms production. But also overall at

least for a segment of the population

there were better economic conditions

and thereby the approval also

rose. As the war progressed more and

more workers which needed were sent to

the front on Hitler's behalf Fritz Zhul

planned the importation of millions of

forced laborers to the Reich for use in

the armament's industry and agriculture.

First of all, volunteers were recruited.

Saganita or abroad. The Polish workers

and agricultural laborers were promised

land or that's what German propaganda

promised. There was no discussion of

endless shifts in dangerous production

factories in the armaments industry, but

of work in Volkswagen factories,

including rations and full pay packets.

In truth, they were fed and paid less

than German workers. If any of these

so-called foreign or eastern workers

objected, they were threatened with

imprisonment in a concentration

[Music]

camp. In the beginning, there was an

attempt to find volunteer workers and

bring them to Germany. They realized

very quickly that this would in no way

bring the masses that were needed.

In this respect, they very quickly

turned to coercive measures through work

obligations, but also through so-called

forcible recruitment. That is, people

were simply taken off the streets in the

occupied areas, out of restaurants, out

of cinemas, out of houses by force.

Children were regarded as useless mouths

to feed. Even babies born in Germany to

so-called Eastern workers were

deliberately left to starve. The Germans

subjected up to 11 million people to

forced labor. In no other national

socialist crime were so many involved as

victims, perpetrators, or

spectators. Share operated his

industries with forced laborers from

concentration camps until the end of the

war.

For the forced laborers were war

material. That is, it was a matter of

getting as many able-bodied people as

possible into war production. And

indeed, the more the war progressed and

the more difficult in practical terms,

the requirement was to supply this war

material, the more brutal the recruiting

measures became.

Forced laborers used in agriculture

often came from Poland. They were

strictly forbidden to associate with

German women. Anyone who did was

denounced and at the least faced public

humiliation. The whole thing was

organized. It was not spontaneous anger

that broke out, but these women were

usually denounced. And if these women

were convicted, it could lead to prison

sentences or mostly to concentration

camp

sentences. And these sentences were

usually accompanied by public

humiliation, which was clearly intended

to really affect the social dignity of

the

women. For example, by cutting their

hair off completely. putting a sign on

them, taking pictures with them, leading

them through the whole

village. Sometimes there were also

violent attacks, but it was all

organized. For example, the BDM, the

National Socialist Women's Society was

involved. It was not something that

sprang spontaneously from the

population. Until March of 1942, the

Hanziatic city of Lubec had been largely

spared the direct effects of the war.

Unlike the Reich capital, Berlin, no

Allied bombs had fallen there yet. The

medieval alleys of the old town still

stood untouched despite the nearby

submarine shipyard Atraamunda Harbor and

its relatively good accessibility for

the Royal Air Force flying

units. Up until February 1942, they had

been subjected to the so-called area

bombing directive. The aim of the

attacks were to break the morale of the

German civilian population by any means,

especially that of the industrial

workers. The new commanderin-chief,

Arthur Harris, was explicitly told that

the targets were to be built up areas

and not, for example, shipyards or

aircraft factories. On the starry

moonlit night of March 29th, the British

dropped their deadly load over Lubec.

After the area bombardment, Thomas man's

birthplace was in flames. The exile had

no knowledge of the new directive.

This

is 320 people were killed in the

firestorm. But contrary to Thomas man's

suspicions, the attacks were not

motivated by a desire for retribution,

but were calculated. The next area

bombardment was to be Rosto.

Why Lubec and Rosto in particular? Both

were Hanziatic cities that had an easily

combustible inner city core and they

were located by the sea and were

therefore easy to find. The interesting

thing, Lubec was also a military target.

Submarines were built in Lubec in the

Flander factories, but they didn't

attack the Flander factories. They

attacked the medieval old town. And it

was the same in Rosto and other cities

later. The plan was to attack about 50

German cities, burn them down, and kill

about 900,000 civilians. This was done

to cause chaos in Germany because the

British argument was that no state would

exist without its cities. These were

administrative centers, economic

centers. When the population fled from

the cities, when there were no more

administrative centers, there would be

chaos and then the Germans would start a

revolution, an uprising like they did in

1918.

But this did not happen. On the

contrary, the population showed

solidarity with the Nazi regime, which

immediately provided aid. The National

Socialist People's Welfare Organization

provided free accommodation and food.

the fact that this effect did not occur,

that the bombing didn't lower the morale

of the civilian population so that it

could possibly lead to an

uprising. I think that was a great

misjudgment on the part of the British

army because most of the German

civilians accepted their situation

because they believed that it was their

duty. It was their contribution what

they had to endure in this

war. They compared themselves to

soldiers who had to endure the same at

the

front. And this folk shaft understood

itself as a community at war, as a

wartime society.

US bomber squadrons also flew attacks on

Nazi Germany from the United Kingdom.

With their flying fortresses from summer

1942 onward, they attacked mainly during

the day, primarily industrial targets

and infrastructure. A Boeing B7 is

capable of carrying more than 4,000 kg

of bombs. British Prime Minister Winston

Churchill did express reservations about

his own strategy but didn't change it.

Once they started with their bombing

directive, they didn't divert from that

because that would have meant

questioning what you had done in the

years before. So they collected

intelligence that confirmed the strategy

and left out other intelligence. So the

classic case of intelligence failure or

politically directed intelligence work

that always confirmed only what they

wanted to hear. And so British

intelligence services reported that next

fall, next spring, the Germans would

collapse. So this began in February 1942

that the bomber command the attacks

almost completely concentrated on

attacking the German inner cities and

burning them down. Attacking especially

the neighborhoods where the German

industrial workers live who they wanted

to hit and they wanted to kill in order

to cause

chaos and in turn to hit the industrial

production in order to end the war with

that.

One of the favorite targets of the

British bomber squadrons was Cologne.

Because of its geographical location, it

was relatively easy to reach. Camera

crews of the Ministry of Propaganda made

films about the heavily hit city center

after the so-called thousand bomber raid

on the night of May 31st. The face of

the cathedral city had been changed

overnight. Almost 500 people died and

45,000 were homeless.

[Music]

That's also what's special about the

bombing directive that was issued there

in February of 1942 because it changed

the target, changed the intent. It

wasn't if we kill civilians, they just

die, but civilians then became the main

target. And that's what made that

directive in February 1942 so special.

Meanwhile, at Oba Zaltzburg in the

Bavarian Alps, Adolf Hitler and his

entourage were safe from such attacks in

the

Burgoff. Italy's duche Benito Mussolini

arrived for a visit at the end of April.

For the news reels, the two dictators

demonstrated unity and strength. To

regain the lost initiative in the war

against the Soviet Union, Hitler had

planned a summer offensive. Units of his

ally also fought on the Eastern Front.

In the previous year, the Axis attacks

had stalled at the fronts of Leningrad,

Moscow, and Sebastapole. Then, Army

Group South supported by Italian,

Romanian, and Hungarian units, was to go

on the offensive again.

Since October 1941, the Third Army

supported by Hungarian troops had been

besieging the Crimean city of

Sevastapole. Only at the end of June

1942, after heavy fighting, did the

defeat of the Soviet defenders become

apparent. The way to the south was free.

Then the German advance was directed

towards the Caucuses. from Kakov. The

troops were to advance in the direction

of Baku. Hitler had long since decided

to exploit the Soviet Union along

colonial lines, as one memorandum put

it, but the circumstances were

unfavorable. The bloodied Vermach could

no longer operate with three army groups

as it had the year before. It was only

capable of advancing in a single

direction. When the Germans began their

summer offensive in 1942, the target was

the caucuses and the Soviet oil. And

this goal made sense because 90% of

Soviet oil was in the caucuses. If they

conquered that, they would have had

access to it themselves. And most

importantly, they would cut off the

Soviets from it. There was relatively

little oil in the Urals. So that would

have been a real arament blow to the

Soviet Union. In May, the Germans had

repulsed a Soviet offensive near Kharkov

and occupied the city. An officer

documented the everyday life of the

occupation in the eastern Ukrainian

metropolis. The Germans then had an

opportunity to systematically put their

criminal plans into practice. Numerous

inhabitants of the city had already been

deported to Germany for forced labor.

Then the deportations to the death camps

began.

Beginning in June of 1941 with the start

of the war against the Soviet Union,

they already had in advance the criminal

orders that is those orders that were

agreed on between the Reich government,

the Nazi government and the military

leadership. So there was already a clear

option and corresponding orders were

also issued that this war would be a

special war, a world war, a war of

extermination for which certain

regulations of international law which

were supposed to limit the war and its

dynamics of violence were suspended. And

there was a difference between the

vermouth advancing forward and an

occupation regime in the various sub

areas which is after all a military

occupation in the beginning and then

later on it turned into a civil

administration through which also the

persecution of political opponents but

also of the Jewish population actually

ran more administratively.

teeth

updark was one of the last successful

encirclement battles fought by the

Germans. The forces earmarked for the

Soviet spring offensive were

annihilated. Some 240,000 Soviet

soldiers went into captivity and to a

horrible fate.

[Music]

Hundreds of thousands of Red Army

soldiers died in the Nazi camps. And you

can say that these people were

systematically killed by hunger. You

can't say that that was a result of

malnutrition or lack of supplies, but

rather that those prisoners of war were

deliberately and intentionally driven to

their deaths. Numerous prisoners of war

were in Avitz and were killed there. And

the first experiments of using gas to

kill people were made using Soviet

prisoners of war. And word got around in

the Red Army. That's why the number of

defectors and prisoners of war decreased

because word got out about how Red Army

soldiers were treated in Germany. That's

when the chance of survival ended up

being greater in Red Army units than in

German

camps. In the spring of 1942, propaganda

minister Joseph Gerbles visited one such

P camp. The agitator knew how to use the

desperate situation of the Soviet Union

invaded by the Germans for his

profidious propaganda and portrayed the

defeated as subhumans. He no longer had

any great illusions about the course of

the

war. Gerbles was the most realistic of

all of them. For him, it was pretty

clear that the matter was over, that

they weren't going to win anymore, but

that they had a great chance to

implement their murderous program now

because they all had to participate. You

could also say that from 1942 on the

regime had no interest in anything else

than to implement this great program of

extermination. To accomplish this, any

means were acceptable. The main

executors of the regime's extermination

plans were Hindrich Himmler and Reinhard

Hydrich. Since the beginning of the war,

they had already murdered tens of

thousands, mainly by

shooting. That was when the mass crimes

were systematized with German

thoroughess. The civil servants

appointed by the regime to administer

the killing met in a villa on Vanz in

January to lay down the justification

for it. the so-called van protocol. It

was recorded how many people one

intended to kill? 11 millions.

The decision that European Jews should

be completely and systematically

murdered had been made at that time. And

in this respect, it was the task of this

institution within the framework of its

competence to act to implement

this competence. And this was

practically the translation of this

ideological political will into an

administrative challenge.

Also discussed was the question of the

deportation of German and Western

European Jews to the ghettos and to the

camps in the east. All that was the

subject of this

conference. Conference the so-called

final solution of the Jewish question as

it was called in the jargon of the

National Socialists had become a

concrete program. The plan for the

genocide of the Jews stipulated how many

people should be deported in what period

of time and by what means they were to

be

killed. The Avitz concentration camp in

occupied Poland was now expanded to

become the largest Nazi death camp. SS

Chief Himmler personally saw to the

expansion of these camps. The killing

factories were to relieve the

overcrowded ghettos and camps where

epidemics and starvation were rampant.

The regime wanted to bring the killing

of the undesirabs back under its

control.

The pressure came from the ghettos and

the camps. The pressure came from those

responsible. They could no longer

continue to operate this way. This of

course created a compulsion to act in

their logic at least.

And from that we now understand that

this very search for more efficient

killing methods very quickly came to

putting this effective killing machinery

in motion with B in the gas chamber.

terror and genocide. By the end of the

war, an estimated 1.5 million people had

died in Avitz from gas, hunger, and

disease. Meanwhile, Gerbles exhorted the

Germans on the home front, warning

anyone who was a thorn in the side of

the Nazi dictatorship, be it the Soviet

population, Jews, opponents of the

regime, or even dissident. There was

hardly any opposition. Fear of Gestapo

terror and imprisonment silenced many

critics of the war. In May of 1942, a

propaganda exhibition, The Soviet

Paradise, opened in Berlin with a staged

mass spectacle. The film produced

especially for the show mocked the

Russian population that had been

impoverished by war and destruction.

Not everyone believed the grotesque

phrases. Nevertheless, the propaganda of

hate was having an effect.

One could already see, for example, in

letters from the field that propaganda

was often believed by what the letter

writers themselves had already accepted

as stereotypical images of the

enemy. Then very often they also

believed what the propaganda

represented. As far as the Soviet Union

was concerned, it must be said that many

soldiers who participated in the war,

especially during the invasion after

June

1941, believed the stereotypes that

existed in German propaganda, namely

that they were

subhumans and that there was a high

degree of willingness to reproduce these

images. There we can also see how the

integration into the declared goals of

the war of extermination that we were

dealing with a war that from the very

beginning aimed not only to win

militarily but to actually radically

destroy this

enemy.

[Music]

for

building the

captain tombs.

[Music]

Meanwhile, in the Pacific, the fortunes

of war initially seemed to be on the

side of the Japanese. The US base in the

Philippines was now the focus of the

Japanese Empire.

Since the turn of the century, the

United States had had a naval base in

the archipelago. There were numerous

bomber squadrons stationed there, but

technically obsolete. Some of the

weapons technology also dated back to

the First World War. The exiled

Americans led a colonial style life in

the Philippines and did not seem to

expect an attack until Japanese troops

attacked Pearl Harbor in December

1941. One day after the raid, Japan

attacked the Philippines.

[Music]

The capital, Manila, had fallen on

January 2nd, 1942. During the

occupation, Japanese troops committed

horrific atrocities against the civilian

population in a city that was almost

completely destroyed. The US troops

retreated to the Baton Peninsula. In

April, they surrendered. About 60,000

American soldiers became Japanese

prisoners of war.

The Japanese military committed a great

number of war crimes during World War

II. And one of the main victim groups

were white

Anglo-Americans, as were Australian

soldiers, prisoners of war, who were

considered inferior by the Japanese

soldiers because of racial views.

The prisoners had to march more than 100

kilometers in the blazing sun. Their

destination was a railroad station from

which they were transported to a

prisoner of war camp.

On the Japanese side, these soldiers

were not provided for at all. There was

almost no food, nothing to drink or only

insufficient. And in addition, these

soldiers were also physically

maltreated, were beaten, were chastised.

Some were also shot. Or if someone lay

down at the roadside because he could

not march on, then he was simply beaten

to death on the spot or

shot. Out of 60,000 soldiers, more than

10,000 certainly died in the Batan Death

March. After all, these soldiers all

ended up in Japanese captivity,

continued to be mistreated in captivity

for weeks, months, years. And of those

soldiers embarked on the Batan Death

March, only 15,000 returned home when

the war ended.

In April, an aircraft carrier with a

squadron of bombers on board set out

from the United States for the Pacific.

President Roosevelt did everything he

could to stop the Japanese advance. A

surprise military strike was planned to

put the empire in its place.

It happened in the spring of 1942, the

so-called dittle raids. That was an air

raid on Japan's capital, Tokyo. It was

intended to send a clear message to the

Japanese army. You are now in danger. We

are now going on the offensive and we

are in a position not only to somehow

attack a peripheral part of the Japanese

Empire, but we are in a position to

strike at the heart of

Japan to go all the way to the seat of

the Japanese emperor and bomb

Tokyo. Mobilization against Japan was

also taking place on the home front.

Racism fermented by the propaganda broke

through unchecked. Since Pearl Harbor,

all US citizens of Japanese ancestry

were considered a security risk. Far

away from civilization, the first

interament camps were built on American

soil. They consisted of barren barracks

and were guarded by US soldiers. After

the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese

Americans, including people who had

American passports, were transferred to

relocation camps, not only in the United

States, but also in Canada. And in a way

it was a continuation of an

anti-Japanese anti-Asian policy that had

been pursued in the US even before the

second world

war that must not be forgotten. This

also showed in a certain respect this

racist way of thinking which was also

definitely present on the part of the

Americans. In addition, of course, there

was a certain idea that people were

saying, you have to lock these people up

now because they could be used by the

Japanese side as informers. They could

somehow spy around. They could somehow

infiltrate American society. They

presented a danger.

120,000 men, women, and children were

sent to those camps. Enemy alien was

their official title. Those who refused

went to prison for years.

Interestingly enough, in the relocation

camps, Japanese Americans really fought

for recognition by saying, "We want to

go to war on the American side, too."

For a long time, the American side did

not allow this. Roosevelt had no

interest in it for a long

time. In 1944, the internments were

declared unconstitutional. The victims,

however, had to wait almost 50 years for

an apology. Midway Island in the Central

Pacific was home to the farthest western

outpost of the United

States. The US Navy air base was located

right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean

between Japan and

California. The six square kilometer ATL

consisted mainly of three runways. To

wage war across the Pacific against

Japan, aircraft carriers and their

bomber squadrons played the most

important role. Each existing airfield

represented an important strategic

advantage. In the spring of 1942,

American forces were increasingly trying

to go on the offensive in the

Asia-Pacific region to now take the

initiative to take the scepter, so to

say, militarily out of Japan's hands.

And the Japanese on the other hand were

toying with the idea of not only further

consolidating the conquered territories

there but possibly making up for the

missed landing in Hawaii. After all,

unlike the attack on Pearl Harbor, this

time the Americans were prepared. On the

morning of June 4th, Japanese fighter

squadrons attacked Midway. They

bombarded the two islands for 20

minutes.

But the Americans were expecting the

Japanese fleet. They had cracked the

Japanese radio codes and thus identified

the target of the attack in advance. The

commanders had assembled as many

aircraft carriers as possible at Midway.

At the Battle of Midway, the Japanese

Navy lost four of six aircraft carriers.

You have to remember that the American

war effort had a lot more battleships

and many more aircraft carriers in the

pipeline compared to Japan. Japan

couldn't keep up in any way with the US

armor-wise. And that's why the Battle of

Midway represented a turning point in

the Pacific

War. Pacific.

The Japanese suffered heavy losses. More

than 3,000 Japanese soldiers died in

that battle.

There was also the aspect of not only

aircraft carriers being lost in the

Battle of Midway. Perhaps more

importantly for the Japanese Empire, the

very well-trained Japanese pilots who

had war experience but also been on the

attack on Pearl Harbor. Many of those

pilots were killed

there. The Battle of Midway was a

successful payback for Pearl Harbor. The

Japanese advance had been halted.

Nevertheless, it was clear that the

soldiers still had a long, blood soaked

road ahead of them to Tokyo. At that

point, however, no one suspected the

final extent to which the slaughter

would go. The dying in the Pacific would

continue for three more years and cost

the lives of tens of thousands of gis.

[Music]

[Music]

die. Don't fall on me against the

rocket.

[Applause]

[Music]

We shall defend our island, whatever the

class may be. We shall fight on the

beaches. We shall fight on the landing

grounds. We shall fight in the fields

and in the streets. We shall fight in

the hills. We shall never surrender.

[Music]

[Music]

The United States of America was

suddenly and deliberately attacked by

naval and air forces of the Empire of

Japan. We will gain the inevitable

triumph. So help us God.

[Applause]

[Music]

Friday as she turned to the hotel.

[Applause]

The Nazis entered this war under the

rather childish delusion that they were

going to bomb everybody else and nobody

was going to bomb them.

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

sing. In the early summer of 1942, the

Vey launched a new offensive in the

Soviet Union. From Kakov in Ukraine, a

German assault force began its advance

eastward. As in the year before, the

troops advanced deep into the country.

But the appearance of rapid success was

deceptive. The width of the front line

on which the units had to operate

increased two and a half times with

troop strength decreasing daily.

Fal Blau, the operation's code name,

demanded the utmost from the soldiers.

They had to advance as far as the

Caucasian oil fields on the Caspian Sea

and cross the Dawn River in the process.

In 1941, the first major campaign had

just failed. It had not succeeded

strategically. It had not achieved its

operational goals. And now, suddenly,

something happened that Hitler had not

reckoned with, that he certainly didn't

want. The war had not only become a

world war, but it was dragging on. They

knew they had to plan for years now. It

was not enough to say the war will last

until October 1941. Suddenly, it was

unforeseeable how long the war would

last. And that's why it became a matter

of economic areas of strategic resources

which Hitler believed you had to have in

order to be able to continue the war for

a longer period of time.

The initial weak resistance of the Red

Army caused the commander-in-chief to

make a fatal decision to the horror of

his generals. Hitler split the already

strained Army Group South into two

parts. While Army Group A continued to

advance toward the Caucases, Army Group

B was to secure the northern flank along

the Vulga.

Hitler believed, however, that once the

offensive was underway, the Russians

would be defeated. They would run away

and Russia would collapse. And so he

split the direction of the attacks. And

now it included Stalingrad and the

Caucuses as targets. Army group south

was split up and that massively

overextended the German forces. That was

an operational error of the First Order

on the part of Hitler.

Although all the generals predicted a

disaster for him, the dictator insisted

on the need for the operation. In

August, he met a high-ranking visitor at

his headquarters. Hitler wanted to

persuade his ally, Tar Boris of Bulgaria

to enter the war against the Soviet

Union. The Furer urgently needed support

for his latest

plan. The most important goal of the war

was no longer the conquest of living

space, but oil. If I don't get the oil

from my cop and Grony, said the

dictator, then I will have to liquidate

this war. But thesar refused.

The Bulgarians traditionally had a very

close relationship with Russia. There

was the religious connection, there was

the cultural connection, and that's why

Zar Boris III said he would take part in

the German war, but not against the

Soviet Union. Also, at that time, the

Bulgarians were an important occupying

power in Yugoslavia. They also sent

troops there. They fought there. They

also fought in Greece, but they were the

only ally not fighting against the

Soviet

Union. Hitler vastly underestimated the

Red Army striking power. He assumed that

the enemy had largely used up the mass

of his reserves in the first winter of

the war. The Russians, said the

dictator, were at the end of their

strength. But the opposite was the case.

Gorgi Zukov, a competent strategist,

became Stalin's deputy

commander-in-chief in August. The Red

Army, was now also training partisan

units. They were supposed to sabotage

the invading Germans behind the front.

Thanks to Allied arms deliveries, the

quality of the equipment as well as the

training of the soldiers constantly

improved. The fighting strength of the

Soviet units increased.

It was evident for the first time in

Stalenrad. Stalingrad. Stalingrad was of

enormous geostrategic importance. It was

located on the vulga and the vulgar was

the lifeline of the Soviet Union. The

oil came from the caucuses had been

transported across the Caspian Sea to

the center of the Soviet Union via the

vulga. At the time, Stalingrad itself

was a city of heavy industry and

important weapons factories. That's why

Stalingrad came into the operation

planning in the first drafts of

Operation Blue. It said you just have to

eliminate Stalingrad somehow stop the

traffic of the vulgar eliminated. This

was actually achieved in August 1942

when they reached the Vular just north

of Stalingrad and then it became more

and more important. It had a symbolic

value. It was simply Stalin city and

then the meaning actually changed. It

was no longer about an economic

geostrategic meaning but about

conquering the city as a symbolic

political

act because they had not conquered other

symbolic cities. They had not conquered

Lenenrad. They had not conquered Moscow.

So now so to speak this symbol of

victory over Stalin with the conquest of

his city had to happen.

Hitler pulled together all his remaining

forces to achieve this goal. In the

meantime, German tanks were running out

of fuel in their hunt for oil in the

step region of the dawn. Smaller units

had reached the oil wells of MOP, but

not enough for the urgently needed

supplies. Frustration often resulted in

outbreaks of violence. On their way, the

troops left behind a trail of

devastation. In this modern war, more

civilians died than soldiers.

soldiers had endured wing in the blood

of the front line for many years. And

the special phenomenon was we talk a lot

about post-traumatic stress disorders

nowadays with the missions abroad. Of

course, an incredible number of soldiers

of the Viam had post-traumatic stress

disorders without this

finding. But most of them had obviously

developed incredible resilience. The

actual thing that needed to be explained

was not that people were traumatized.

Traumatized in a medical sense. They

were traumatized soldiers. They were in

the minority. The majority built

resilience and were able to live with

dying, killing, and fighting at least to

the point where they could live a

reasonably normal life again

afterwards. The carnage was successfully

suppressed. The downside of the war was

played down for the Volkski Mineshaft.

Here we see how the war wounded and

frontline fighters are cared for in

Munich's English garden. The Nazis knew

very well the psyche of their people,

wrote a judicial official, Friedri Kelna

in his diary in the summer of

1942. Confidence in victory only lasts

when victory follows victory, assuming

that the end of the war is in sight. The

people don't care how that is achieved.

The point of cabaret evenings, var film

screenings in particular, was to give

soldiers opportunities to stop thinking

about the war, to dream about a

different future, and to think about the

time before the war again.

In fact, since the beginning of the

campaign against the Soviet Union, every

third German soldier had been reported

wounded, missing, or dead. Unmoved by

this, the Nazi leadership in Munich

staged a parade of troops on a grand

scale. The regime knew how to stir up

public opinion. Nazi Germany was still

only receiving reports of success from

the front. Being possibly defeated by

the Bolevik enemy seemed unthinkable.

People were confident of victory.

[Music]

On the one hand, morale in Nazi Germany

was high for a long time because people

were still relatively well off. On the

other hand, there was definitely great

ideological fervor in the population.

People believed in the final victory.

They believed in the fur. They believed

in the goals of the war. A certain

well-being plus a belief in the goals

kept the population united for a very

long time. Plus any kind of resistance

was brutally punished, suppressed. There

was no free media, no critical

reporting, so it was difficult to form

an opinion about what the real situation

was. Perhaps one was aware of one's

immediate surroundings, and even the

news coming from the field was all

censored. There was definitely great

ignorance among the population about how

bad things really were.

[Music]

Hitler had given the order to Colonel

General Friedrich Palos to conquer

Stalenrad. The sixth army was advancing

on the city. Italians, Romanians, and

Hungarians had to secure the flanks. On

the way to the Vulga, they soon

experienced acute supply shortages. The

condition of many of the divisions were

already critical and visibly

deteriorating.

More than 1 million Vermacht soldiers

had already been reported killed,

wounded, or missing in action.

Exhaustion was spreading. The march of

more than a thousand km had left the men

at the edge of their endurance. They had

no idea what lay ahead of them.

Research has shown that the Germans were

already completely weakened when they

faced Stalingrad, that they were at the

end of their tether, that the units had

already been bled dry, that they had

supply problems, they had started to

starve even before the city was closed

in while the Soviet Union was able to

deploy massive reserves there and the

foreign army's east department

completely misjudged that.

On August 23rd, 1942, Luft Flot 4, Air

Force 4 under General Ober von Richtofen

began bombing the city. 600 bombers

dropped explosive and incendiary bombs

for days in 1,600 sorties. 40,000

civilians died. All that remained of

Stalingrad was a field of rubble. On

September 3rd, the first German units

reached the outer ring of defense.

And then the Red Army dragged the

Germans into a house-to-house battle

that involved extremely heavy losses.

And now on top of that, the Red Army was

fighting a battle at no matter what the

cost. The fact that they outnumbered the

Germans, that they constantly

counterattacked, had huge losses. And

even though the Germans were

outnumbered, they managed to capture the

city. And although the attackers were

superior, the tollin blood was immense.

For Stalin, it was also about symbolism.

My city must not be captured. To put it

bluntly, Stalin was smothering the

German advance in the blood of his own

soldiers.

In accordance with Stalin's orders of

don't take a step back, Red Army

soldiers who were accused of lacking

combat readiness were put in front of a

firing squad.

Stalin expressly forbade the evacuation

of civilians from the city.

The Soviet Union would have had to pay a

much smaller toll in blood had it not

been for the decision made by this

dictator. Until 1942, all of his

decisions were wrong. He forbid soldiers

to retreat. He ordered units that had no

ammunition at all and could not continue

fighting to continue fighting. He had

had dozens of generals shot for failure.

He basically ruled everywhere with fear

and terror and believed that a frontal

assault was the only way to win a war.

Not to mention that he was influenced by

very archaic ideas of honor and

masculinity. All of this made no

military sense at all. And he only

listened to his generals now and then

after the battle of Stalingrad. The idea

that people today associate Stalin as

the dictator who was the great

strategist of the Second World War is

completely wrong. People associate his

name with victory in World War II. But

without him, there would have been a

greater chance of ending this war

sooner. Stalin ordered the 62nd Army to

defend the city unconditionally. 200,000

civilians had to build defenses and

barricades in work columns.

Nevertheless, the Germans succeeded in

pushing the Russians back to the banks

of the Vulga. Soon they had conquered

about 90% of the city. In the course of

the battle, half a million Soviet

soldiers died in a hail of bullets. The

NKVD executed another 13,500 Red Army

soldiers for alleged desertion.

What Stling was displaying there was

complete contempt for his own people and

the generals as well. Maybe not all of

them, but many generals really had no

regard for casualties at all. It was

only crucial that in the end someone was

left holding the flag high and that this

could be counted as a victory. It's

pretty dramatic what happened there, how

people were sometimes sent into the fire

and were burned. The Germans noted with

shaking heads in their field reports

that at points where there were already

masses of dead or destroyed tanks, even

there, the generals sent their troops

into the fire again and again. So, you

have to say that with many Soviet

military leaders, there was a complete

contempt for the life of their own

soldiers.

At Hitler's refuge at Oba Zaltzburg in

the summer of 1942, reports of successes

from North Africa were also coming in.

At the Behof, the dictator welcomed his

ally Benito Mussolini. A year earlier,

the latter's disastrous conduct of the

war had prompted Hitler to send German

troop units to North Africa. After

alternating offensives on both sides,

the operations of the Axis powers

against the Allies were extremely

successful. The goal of Operation Tissus

was the conquest of the Libyan fortress

of Tbrook, an important port in the

Mediterranean. Hitler's favorite general

Raml had been able to achieve surprising

success time and again since the

beginning of the North African campaign.

The vast desert planes enabled his

armored troops to conduct long range

operations in a fast-moving war. And

then Raml set out to conquer Egypt.

In May of 1942, Raml's tank army was

properly supplied for the first time.

Sufficient supplies had arrived via the

Mediterranean, and RML decided to launch

a major offensive. He bypassed the

British positions at Gazala, took tobuk

by storm. something he had not been able

to do a year earlier and advanced across

the Egyptian border to Elmagne 80 km

from

Alexandria for Alexandria.

The deep water port of Tbrook secured

supplies for the German troops across

Libya. The victory had cost the Africa

corps heavy losses. Its inventory of

tanks was severely depleted. Next,

Hitler wanted the Vermacht units to

occupy the Suez

[Music]

Canal. Raml's top commander was already

planning to advance from there further

into the Near East and India to gain

access to the British colonies.

Britain's entire position in Middle East

actually hinged on the defense of Cairo

and the important port of Alexandria.

And surprisingly, RML had just managed

to conquer Tobuk in the summer of 1942

and then very surprisingly continued to

invade Egypt. And then the big question

was, would he in a final effort manage

to get to Cairo as

well? Just one day after winning the

battle of Tbrook on June 21st, RML was

promoted to field marshal general. At

the age of 50, he became the youngest to

hold this rank.

Africa. The news real propaganda knew

how to seize the

[Music]

moment.

[Music]

forations in

in July. RML wanted to finally win the

African campaign and ordered the armored

units to continue their rapid advance,

but the allies prevented them from

circumventing their positions again and

met the German troops at the decisive

battle at Elamagne.

The British set up defensive positions

at Elmagne and that was very well chosen

because to the south was the Qatara

depression where the Germans couldn't

deploy their armored forces. Thus, in

early July, the British succeeded in

thwarting RL's breakthrough attempt at

the first battle of Alamagne.

After the rapid advance, the tank army's

supplies and fuel were largely depleted

and the supply lines were stretched to

the breaking point and the soldiers were

exhausted. Raml knew that he had to be

able to penetrate the Allied defenses in

one swift thrust and prevent retreat.

[Music]

At the end of August, RML decided to

attack one last time in order to perhaps

reach Alexandria, the Nile, and the Zou.

He attacked, but after 48 hours, his

offensive had more or less failed. The

British had managed to bring in enough

reinforcements. In the meantime, their

air force had gained supremacy over the

German air force, and so Raml then had

to retreat once again to his initial

position.

At the beginning of November, the field

marshall had to admit that he had lost

the second battle for Elamagne. When he

learned of Raml's order to retreat,

Hitler was beside himself. "You can show

your troops only one way. Either victory

or death was the Furer's radio message,

but the field marshall had the radio

traffic cut off during the retreat." A

warrant for RML's arrest was not

enforced. Meanwhile, tens of thousands

of German and Italian soldiers were

taken prisoner of war by the

[Music]

Allies. To mark the victory, British

Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrived

for a troop visit at the British Eighth

Army and was celebrated.

Almagne was the first great victory for

the British. They had really beaten Raml

decisively at this time. It was not

victory in North Africa, but Roma was

now forced to retreat all the way to

Tunisia. It was also the last battle

fought by the Commonwealth alone against

the German Empire. In the future,

Britain would fight battles together

with their US

ally. The US was still fighting its

battles in this war exclusively on the

islands of the Pacific.

In the war against Japan, they were

about to leap across the Pacific. Next

target, Guadal

Canal. Here, the Japanese had built an

airfield. From this strategic position,

Japanese long-range bombers could easily

attack the seaw route that connected the

US with

Australia. The battle for the Solomon

Islands and for the main island of

Guadal Canal represented a very

important building block in American

strategy. the so-called strategy of

island hopping. The idea was to approach

the Japanese mainland island by island

from the south.

For the first time, US forces went on

the offensive against Japan. They had

prepared for months to capture the enemy

strongholds in the Pacific.

The Japanese and the Japanese military

were of course aware of that and that's

why Gual Canal was also heavily

contested. It was very clear to the

Japanese that this was a very important

building block for the American strategy

of island hopping and of course also for

American strategy when it came to

securing Pearl Harbor and Hawaii.

Hawai's

unbel Marines accomplished what was

previously thought impossible. crossing

onto the beach from their ships under

fire from coastal batteries. After

landing on August 7th, they initially

encountered little resistance, but the

Japanese would not admit defeat. For

half a year, they continued to launch

new offensives. The Battle of Guadal

Canal went down in US military history

as one of the longest and most bitter.

There was the battle of Guadal Canal

which had been fought for months in the

countryside which was very bloody and

very racist. Hardly any prisoners were

taken by either side. It was a very

drastic battle that went on in the

Solomon Islands.

[Music]

Marines showed their trophies as a sign

of victory. The Americans lost nearly

1,500 gis in ground fighting. The

Japanese nearly 15,000. The victory on

Guadal Canal secured for US forces an

important launching point for future

operations. On the other side of the

world, the Soviet allies were getting

ready for their decisive offensive.

Stalenrad was to be that decisive

place. More than 200,000 soldiers of the

German Vermacht and its allies were

entrenched in the ruins of the city on

the Vulga. Reports from reconnaissance

planes of heavy Soviet troop

concentrations on the opposite bank of

the Vulga were ignored by the Supreme

Army command. The Sixth Army waged a

hopeless battle over a wasteland of

rubble.

The beer's war in the Soviet Union was

after all a war of movement. A war in

huge spaces. A war in which tank

formation surrounded each other. A war

that actually did not take place in

buildup zones at all. That did not take

place in cities at all. The Germans had

no rules for fighting in cities. You

didn't fight in cities. There were

actually very few examples before

Stalingrad where the Viamat fought in

cities. Now the units were coming into

the city, an industrial city destroyed

by German air raids. They weren't

prepared for that and it was very

bloody. They should have been called off

but Hitler persevered and so battalion

after battalion was wasted

there. The interesting thing about that

and this is overlooked is that the

defenders were outnumbered. Usually the

attacker has the upper hand,

but here in the fighting in the city of

Stalingrad, around the train station,

around the tractor factory, the Germans

were outnumbered. And yet they managed

to capture Stalingrad. That showed that

craftsmanship, the art of war, the

German divisions that were deployed

there, they had mastered their craft.

But the number of casualties was

immense. And of course it was

operational nonsense to fight for the

last mound of rubble in

Stalingrad. Rat war is what the soldiers

called fighting in the houses. The

Soviet defenders turned every foxhole,

every ruined house, every intersection

into a fortress from which an unexpected

attack could be made. Snipers

deliberately executed German soldiers by

ambush. The city on the vulga had to be

held at all costs.

If Stalingrad had fallen, the front line

would have been along the vulga. And

that would have been a preliminary

decision to extend the German empire to

the vulgar and to have access to the

caucuses and thus to the Middle Eastern

countries which were potentially

sympathetic to Germany such as Iran for

example. On the other hand, that was a

prestigious city. It was clear to Stalin

that the city that bore his name must

not fall. And that's why the Red Army's

draconian and cruel measures were

particularly extensive in Stalingrad

because of its importance. Here too, one

could have said that the Red Army could

have taken the city from the beginning.

They could have retreated. They would

not have had to defend house after house

with an unbelievable number of

casualties that exceeded several times

the German casualties and where a Red

Army soldier had a few days chance of

surviving.

At the beginning of November, the

Vermacht had still not succeeded in

breaking the Soviet resistance. The Red

Army only held about 10% of the city.

The Foreign Army's East Department

reported that the Soviet Union had no

reserves left. Hitler ordered the

breakthrough with shock troops. The

furer ignored the concerns of his

general staff.

Hitler would not accept turning back.

No, we must somehow save ourselves from

the situation. No peace agreements.

Diplomacy had not been used in this war

for a long time. It was either hold or

forward.

That was what the Fura, who was also the

military commander-in-chief,

wanted. This was an attitude that he

extended to his own people, his own

people, his own soldiers. He didn't care

how many German soldiers fell or were

wounded. The main thing was that the oil

fields of the Caucases and the Crimea

would be captured or held. That was the

most important thing and those who did

not cooperate had to bear the

consequences. In Adolf Hitler's mind,

this relentlessness was not only

directed against external enemies but

also against his own people. If that was

the case, then the German Empire, German

society would perish with him.

Hitler brushed aside General Paul's

warning of a major Soviet offensive. On

November 8th, he announced the imminent

victory at the Lvenro in

Munich. Fore! Foreign! Foreign!

On November 19th, the Red Army struck

back. 4 days after it started, Operation

Uranus closed the pocket around

Stalingrad. The German troops were

doomed. As early as June, Churchill and

Roosevelt met in Washington for a

planning conference. The British and the

Americans promised Stalin help in the

fight against the Vermacht. The opening

of a second front in Europe was intended

to relieve the Soviets.

[Music]

At this point, Churchill and Roosevelt

made important strategic decisions.

Namely, they said opening of the second

front, they wouldn't do it in 1943. They

would not land in France in 1943. That

was always Stalin's hope. Instead they

would first stabilize the Mediterranean

region and there with the fall of

Torbrook it was really burning for

church and therefore one said one will

land with the available means in North

Africa operation torch that is in

Algeria and Morocco in order to stap

Raml in the back and to stabilize the

Mediterranean area and at the same time

one had to then try to support the

Soviet Union to make it materially

stronger because they would not land in

1943 in France. that would only come in

1944.

The Red Army was generously supported

with weapons and equipment. The Soviet

Union and the Western Allies were now

officially allies. The distrust was

always there. Of course, this

capitalism, this unequal alliance would

certainly not have come together if

there had not been a common enemy. And

that's what the National Socialists were

hoping for right up to the end, saying

that this unequal coalition couldn't

last long. It's bound to break up at

some point. But what they underestimated

was that a common enemy held this

unequal coalition together until the

enemy was at last gone.

Mobilizing against this enemy was also a

subject for the film industry,

especially in the United States. To

convince the American public of the need

to intervene in the war in Europe, the

US Army commissioned a series of

propaganda films. From 1942 to 45,

director Frank Capra, who had won

multiple Oscars, made seven films

entitled Why We Fight, designed to be

shown to American GIS. The series were

eventually shown in public cinemas.

Worldwide army release alone requires

225 prints per second. Prelude to war or

Nazis Attack were the names of the works

that earned Capra another Oscar in 1943

for best documentary. They were intended

to convince the American nation of the

ruthlessness of the enemy according to

the commentary.

And for those who don't like it, you

don't

eat or you disappear into a

concentration camp.

Or you get

this and this is the man who gives it to

you.

[Music]

In the United States, the problem was to

motivate war against the Germans, whom

many Americans liked. In contrast to

propaganda against Japan, it wasn't

possible to fall back on existing racial

prejudices.

This problem was solved by

differentiating between Germans and

Nazis. But the longer the war went on,

the less willing people were to

differentiate between Germans and Nazis.

And propaganda messages had to be

communicated in a catchy

way which was not conductive to

differentiation.

To defeat Nazi Germany, the Americans

and the British prepared to land in

North Africa and embarked from North

America and Britain for the crossing to

the Mediterranean. The GIS had no idea

what lay ahead of them. For most, the

journey to war began as an adventure.

Many had never been away from home. They

had no combat experience

whatsoever. Operation Torch began on

November 8th, 1942. The plan called for

the simultaneous landing of American and

British troops around the key ports of

Morocco and Algeria, Casablanca, Oruran,

and Alers. Protected by banks of fog

dispersed by fighter units, the soldiers

approached the coast in assault boats.

One platoon, 36 men, fit into each boat.

The boats raced ahead at a speed of 9

knots. The new technique of the

amphibious landing, which the Americans

had used successfully for the first time

in the Pacific War, proved to be

extremely effective.

When the allies landed in North Africa

in Operation Torch, Hitler didn't decide

to withdraw from North Africa, but sent

reinforcements to Tunis. And so, the

fighting in North Africa continued for

another 6 months. However, more than

250,000 German and Italian soldiers were

taken prisoner in the process.

For these men, the war was over. The

relief can be seen on the faces of the

Italian soldiers. The disastrous course

of the war in North Africa contributed

significantly to the decline in power of

their duche Mussolini in the coming

year. On November 10th, US troops

surrounded Casablanca, Morocco, which

was held by forces of the pro- Hitler

French government. Since Vichy France

had refused to enter the war on the side

of Nazi Germany, the Americans had hoped

to meet no significant resistance. In

fact, the colonial troops surrendered on

the same day. There was no fierce battle

like the one that took place in

Stalenrad.

In North Africa, people were dying by

the thousands. So the idea of the

chivalous war perhaps half the truth.

What we can say is this was not an

ideological war, the murder of prisoners

which was common place in the Soviet

Union. That didn't happen. The mass

murder of civilians, partisan warfare,

all of this did not exist in North

Africa. Of course, there were civilians

in North Africa. There was also forced

labor. Libya was after all an Italian

colony. There were even Libyan Jews who

were taken to the mainland and killed

there. But the character of the war in

North Africa was ultimately a completely

different one. The scale was completely

different. So if you look at World War

II as a total war, we find relatively

few traces of it in North Africa.

Raml's Africa Corps had to withdraw all

the way to Tunisia. Now the Allies

threatened to stab him in the back. In

Iran, the defenders had surrendered on

November 9th. In Alers, members of the

resistance simultaneously staged a coup

against the military of the Vichi

regime, which was allied with Nazi

Germany. Field Marshall Ruml's troops

were now coming under pressure.

Nevertheless, German propaganda

continued to portray him as a glorious

commander, probably because the desert

fox had been able to turn seemingly

hopeless situations into surprising

victories on several occasions.

North Africa was probably the theater of

war where it went back and forth the

most. There were several German

offensives. There were several British

offensives. The game ball there was

always the so-called Chiranika. It

always depended on how far the

respective site could supply its troops.

That is if one side advanced further, it

went further and further away from its

supply lines and the other which

retreated got closer to its supply

lines. And that's how the whole thing

came together like a rubber band. It

went back and forth all the time.

The British Eighth Army commanded by

Bernard Montgomery advanced from the

east and the newly arrived US forces

commanded by Dwight D. Eisenhower

advanced from the west. The German

troops were entangled in retreating

battles and faced a double

[Music]

superiority. To escape total

annihilation, the Germans had to retreat

further and

further. German troops and their allies

recorded about 250,000 dead, wounded,

and prisoners at the end of this battle.

Meanwhile, a secret conference took

place in Casablanca, Morocco on January

14th. US President Roosevelt arrived and

inspected an honor formation of the

American armed forces. Afterwards, he

met with British Prime Minister Winston

Churchill and together they set the

invasion of Italy as the war's next

objective. To end the war, they demanded

no less than the unconditional surrender

of the Axis powers. Stalin agreed with

this demand.

[Music]

At the Kazablanca conference in 1943,

the allies had declared there could be

nothing other than unconditional

surrender. In other words, it was clear

to everyone there was only total defeat

or victory. There couldn't be anything

in between. The war could only end with

Germany's unconditional surrender and

occupation. So now you have to put

yourself in the head of a Prussian

officer. It was inconceivable that

someone would surrender without the last

bullet having been

shot and there was no way out and Hitler

exploited this in a pidious way. These

Prussian notions of honor and rank were

exploited to get these people to keep

fighting. It may have been an error on

the part of the allies, but they had

learned the lesson from the first world

war. If this must not happen again, then

there must be no way out of it. But on

the other hand, hopelessness is always

something that drives all dictators all

over the world to the extreme.

While Nazi propaganda denounced Allied

policy as a war of extermination against

Germany, German troops in North Africa

lost battle after battle in the spring

of

1943. The defeated enemies were interned

in prison camps for the rest of the war

in accordance with the Geneva

Convention. The British and Americans

were now able to decode almost all

German radio transmissions and were

therefore wellinformed about Axis plans.

The German defeat in North Africa was

only a matter of time.

[Music]

Iron territori. volume.

[Applause]

[Music]

We shall defend our island whatever the

task may be. We shall fight on the

beaches. We shall fight on the landing

grounds. We shall fight in the fields

and in the streets. We shall fight in

the hills. We shall never surrender.

[Music]

[Music]

The United States of America was

suddenly and deliberately attacked by

naval and air forces of the Empire of

Japan. We will gain the inevitable

triumph. So help us God.

[Applause]

[Music]

the star

of the hotel.

[Applause]

The Nazi entered this war under a rather

childish delusion that they were going

to bomb everybody else and nobody was

going to bomb them.

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

Super January 10th.

1942 in the wolf's lair near Rastenborg

in East Prussia, Adolf Hitler welcomed

Romanian dictator Antonescu. The troops

of the Allied powers faced the Red Army

on the Eastern front and had fought

together on the Vulga River that

winter. The pictures of January 1943

were set against the background of the

catastrophe at Stalingrad. Two Romanian

armies had been sent to the Eastern

Front at Hitler's request. In 41, early

42, they asked the Romanians, "Now do a

little bit more." And those things were

gone. Now there were huge losses and

Stalingrad had quite a big political

effect. Hitler, of course, had to try to

keep his allies fighting, of whom

Romania was actually the most important

because the Romanians had the most

soldiers on the Eastern Front.

The meeting of the furer and the

Romanian leader served another purpose.

At a time of imminent defeat at

Stalenrad, it was necessary to

demonstrate confidence publicly.

It had a very great effect in showing

the German people that we still had

allies because the anti-Hitler coalition

was growing bigger and bigger and more

and more Germans were asking themselves

how they were supposed to manage against

this huge coalition which by now spanned

half the world. However, for the

soldiers of the Axis powers in

Stalenrad, there was no justification

for the display of optimism. The battle

for the industrial and armament center

had been raging since August of 1942.

After heavy bombardment by the

Luftwatha, German units advanced into

the city. Despite initial successes,

however, the offensive came to a

halt. The war in the Soviet Union was

after all a war of movement, a war in

huge spaces, a war that actually didn't

take place in cities at all.

The Germans had no regulations at all

for fighting in cities. And now these

units come into this city, an industrial

city destroyed by German air raids. And

they were not prepared for that. It was

very bloody. It should have been

stopped. But Hitler persevered. And so

battalion after battalion was wasted

there. Dot for heights.

The sixth army was receiving fewer and

fewer supplies and was slowly bleeding

to death in the ruins of the city. By

midocctober, its commander and chief,

Colonel General Frederick Powos had only

about 25,000 combatants left out of a

quarter of a million soldiers and they

faced an enemy fighting fanatically.

What happened there was pretty dramatic.

How people were really sent into the

fire and burned up. Even the Germans

noted in their reports, shaking their

heads, at points there were already

masses of dead or destroyed tanks. Even

then, the general sent their troops into

the fire again and

again. It has to be said with many

Soviet military leaders, there was a

complete contempt for the life of their

own

soldiers. Hitler had estimated just 8

days for the so-called operation heron,

the capture of Stalingrad. an insane

miscalculation because even after weeks

of fighting, the city could not be

completely taken. The Red Army brought

in reserves from the east and repeatedly

threw fresh forces into the battle. In

mid- November, the Soviets launched a

counteroffensive called Operation

Uranus. It succeeded in encircling the

Axis soldiers. Here we see propaganda

film intended to show the moment when

the circle around Stalingrad closed.

And while an army was headed for

downfall on the Vulga some 3,000 km to

the west, there were celebrations.

January 12th, 1943, Raj Marshall Herman

Guring had invited guests to his

Cotenhal estate in Brandenburg to

celebrate his 50th birthday.

Guring is the Guring was the most

decorated German soldier of the Second

World War which many were not aware of

because the Grand Cross which he

received in July 1940 was above the

Knight's Cross and was awarded only to

him and he also had a rank the rice

marshal which was above felt Marshall

which actually didn't exist and that's

interesting and important in that sense

because the order and the rank made it

clear what Guring was. He was the number

two man in the country, the designated

successor to Hitler.

The birthday boy had pompously announced

that his air force would supply the

trapped troops in Stalingrad with

ammunition and food, even though he must

have been aware of the hopelessness of

that undertaking.

He despared and he then tried to score

points with Hitler again by saying yes

I'm supplying the sixth army in

Stalingrad and that didn't work so he

got hit on the head and he didn't see

any way to stop it so we have records of

his meetings with his staff and he

understood what was at stake he knew how

difficult the situation was but then he

always said that in the end I have to go

to Hitler now and I have to sell it to

him give me to news and it went so far

that people put in writing how difficult

the situation was and he tore up that

document.

While Guring was feeling sorry for

himself, the trapped soldiers received

only pathetic slogans of perseverance

instead of the hope for rations by air.

A speech by the air force chief was

broadcast all the way to the vulga and

must have sounded like sheer mockery to

the infantry men.

[Music]

Africa. The situation in the surrounded

city continued to deteriorate. Cold

epidemics and hunger took their toll. At

the beginning of January, the daily

ration for a soldier in the Stalingrad

cauldron was barely 50 gram of bread, no

more than a slice. A German soldier

noted, "The truth is the knowledge of

the hardest struggle in a hopeless

situation. Misery, hunger, cold

renunciation, doubt, despair, and

horrific death. That's all I'll say

about

[Music]

it. Despite the increasingly hopeless

situation, surrender was out of the

question for Hitler. Defiantly, he

ordered the city to be held at all

costs. At the end of January, he

appointed Fri Powus, commanderin-chief

of the sixth army, as field marshal. The

hope was that an officer of such rank

would choose suicide rather than

surrender.

Friedrich Paulos was disillusioned by

the fact that all attempts of his to get

his permission from Hitler to surrender

at Stalingrad in order to save lives was

rejected by Hitler. And at that moment

he actually felt betrayed and abandoned.

And for this dictator to still take a

bullet in the hat. That's where he said

no. Doing that would mean I would take

the responsibility. And the

responsibility for the death and failure

in Stalingrad is not mine but Hitler's.

and he simply didn't want to take the

responsibility. He didn't want to take

the responsibility for this defeat to

wear that

hat. On January 31st, Fred Pus, the

highest ranking German officer up to

that time, went into Soviet captivity. A

few days later, the last Axis units in

the city surrendered. After more than

five months, the battle of Stalingrad

was over.

That comes from starting is to end.

First of all, there was shock. It was

only written down in the diaries or in

the secret morale reports that the

people were shocked. They couldn't

imagine it. An entire army had perished,

sacrificed. In those days, defeats were

associated with

symbols, with the surrender of armies,

with the surrender of

countries. And the defeat of Moscow was

not connected with the surrender of any

army, with any symbolic act. The Germans

were repulsed and they lost 200,000

soldiers. But this didn't appear in any

statistics. Stalingrad was the first

symbolic place where the veh suffered a

defeat. It couldn't be hidden.

The battle of Moscow could be retouched

a little. Stalingrad

couldn't. Tens of thousands were lucky

enough to be flown out. In February, the

remaining 100,000 men were dragged into

captivity. Of that amount, only about 6%

survived and returned to Germany years

later.

[Music]

On the German side, of course, the blame

for the defeat at Stalingrad was aimed

primarily on the Allies. But of course,

it was wrong to shift the blame onto the

allies, which Hitler did. That's why he

said in the summer of 1943 that he

wanted to carry out the summer offensive

only with German troops, so that

something like Stalinrad wouldn't happen

again. But of course, critical mistakes

were also made on the German side. And

even without the allies, the outcome

certainly would not have been different.

The mood in Germany was devastating. In

midFebruary, Joseph Gerbles addressed a

select audience in Berlin's Sport

Palast. His speech was broadcast on the

radio.

Gel's speech in the sports palace was

definitely a key

event because at a critical moment he

tried to finally commit the masses to

total war.

Total war also meant radical

comprehensive social mobilization of all

available

resources. The Minister of Propaganda

asked 10 rhetorical questions which were

ecstatically received.

[Applause]

[Music]

Don't force that in front of you.

[Applause]

The interesting thing, however, was that

he actually spoke in a style that would

have been more appropriate, let's say,

in the spring of 1945 or even the fall

of 44 because living conditions for

Germans in February of 43 weren't so bad

at first. It was before the Allied air

offensive on the ruer or on Hamburg.

[Music]

Yes, there was bombing, but the really

bad stuff was yet to come. The fronts

were far away in Russia. Germany

dominated France. German soldiers were

also in Tunisia. The let's say average

Berliner who was listening was certainly

in a different mood in February 43. And

Gerbles of course knew what was coming

and had more information. So in that

respect it was a speech that was

actually much too radical for the

atmosphere that prevailed in Berlin at

that

time. A few months earlier the German

public was still used to hearing success

stories. The veh had advanced as far as

the caucuses.

[Music]

Alarm at the Pass was the title of a

propaganda film that was supposed to

document the alleged success. Hans Etle,

who had previously made a name for

himself as Lenny Reefenstall's

cameraman, shot the film with mountain

troops on location.

[Music]

The German advance, however, soon only

succeeded on celluloid. The vast gains

of territory in the Caucuses, initially

aided by Soviet retreats, resulted in

significant supply problems of fuel and

ammunition. The overstretched supply

routes contributed to the Vermacht

having to withdraw from the mountain

range between the Black Sea and the

Caspian Sea from the turn of the year

1942 to 1943. Therefore, when Alarm at

the Pass was finished, Gerbles refused

to release the film to

[Music]

theaters. In other areas of the Eastern

Front, the situation continued to

deteriorate for the Vermacht and its

allies. After the victory at Stalingrad

in early 1943, the Red Army tried to use

this momentum for

themselves. In the southern section of

the Eastern Front, the Red Army launched

two major offensives, offensive stern

and

offensive. Initially with offensive and

then also with Stern Stalin tried to cut

off the entire southern wing of the

German eastern front and liberate Crimea

and destroy all of the German forces in

the south of the eastern front and

advance

to in many places the Vmach had no

choice but to retreat. Here was the

official language of the situation in

the propaganda a lesson in whitewashing.

[Music]

Kakov was also targeted by the Red Army.

The city had been under German control

since October of 1941. Idllic images of

the occupation bely the reality. For

example, most of the Jewish population

had been murdered. In midFebruary 1943,

the Red Army recaptured the city, but

the Vey did not admit

defeat. Then the Germans managed to

bring in reserves and recaptured Kakov

in a counter offensive in March of 43

and then managed to roughly recapture

their initial starting position from the

summer of 42. But those were very

critical days when it wasn't clear

whether the Germans would even succeed

in stopping the Soviets again. Or was

that now a Napoleonic catastrophe?

Napoleon who retreated from Moscow once

also no longer found a way to stop. But

at some point that then degenerated into

a retreat and that danger certainly

existed in February of 43. And the

Germans could have stopped that with a

counter offensive. they could stabilize

the front line and then thus conclude

these winter battles.

The success at Karkov temporarily belied

the balance of power in the southern

section of the eastern front and German

soldiers were all too willing to be

blinded.

The morale of the soldiers was

stabilized once again because the

soldiers said to themselves, "Well,

we're still superior. We're tactically

superior to the Soviets. We're actually

also superior in terms of weapons." and

the foo knows what he's doing and they

were still optimistic. The morale

reports also said that even in the

spring the soldiers who rode from the

front line or came on leave from the

front line were actually more optimistic

than the public. They also reassured the

people and said no we're superior.

In the capital of the Reich the long-

aaited success on the eastern front was

exploited to great public effect. Adolf

Hitler appeared on heroes memorial day

in front of the soy house on unden

Lindon along with representatives of the

Luftwatha the army and the navy Herman

Guring Wilhelm Kitle Carl Dernitz as

well as Hinrich Himmler the holiday had

been specifically postponed so that the

furer could announce the recapture of

the then fourth largest city in the

Soviet Union it was the furer's first

public appearance since the fall of the

sixth army at Stalingrad

Foreign speech. Foreign speech. Foreign

speech.

Hitler also gave a speech on Hero's

Memorial Day, but a very short one. I

think it was only a quarter of an hour

long or so. Nothing at all compared to

the usual pre-war speeches of 3 or 4

hours. And we know that from the moot

reports of the security service that

movie goers were terribly disappointed

because while it was shown in the news

reel, no original recordings were played

of Hitler or how his voice sounded at

the time. They really clung to it. How

does the fur look? They also watched his

face closely in the news reels. Is he

positive? What is he saying? How does he

say it? And then the news real announcer

only summarized what Hitler said and

they were all terribly disappointed. And

Gerbel tried for months to persuade

Hitler to give a public speech again to

finally give the people hope again.

Hitler didn't want that at all. He

always said first we need victories

again. In that situation, he didn't want

to do that.

Further disappointments were to follow.

For example, in the North African

theater since February of 41, German

units had been fighting there alongside

the

Italians. For a long time, Vend RML and

his Africa Corps had been a source of

success. The tank general had previously

made a name for himself in the Western

campaign against France and was now

presented by Nazi propaganda as a

brilliant army commander. The image of

the strategically skilled desert fox was

very popular throughout the reich.

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

But ever since the Allies landed massive

forces in North Africa at the end of

1942 in what was called Operation Torch,

which opened a second front in the rear

of the Africa Corps, the troops of the

Axis powers were increasingly on the

defense. offensive. At first, Berlin did

not recognize the signs of the times.

Hitler forbade withdrawing troops from

Tunisia. On the contrary, he continued

to pump more troops in there. That was

typical of Hitler. There is this Nazi

will to preserve defending at all costs

to the last grenade.

Despite the increasingly hopeless

military situation, the Africa Corps put

up fierce resistance. Here are pictures

taken by US frontline cameramen of tough

fighting near

Tunis. Personnel consequences on the

German side came only later. RL is in

North Africa. Raml was in North Africa

until the beginning of March 1943 and

was then recalled because defeat was

clear and the regime didn't want to see

one of the most popular generals go into

captivity. And besides, they still

needed him for propaganda in the further

course of the war.

The allies now had four times as many

tanks in North Africa as the Axis powers

and had air supremacy.

In midMay 1943, the German Italian units

under Raml's successor, Colonel General

Von Arnim, formed Army Group Africa and

surrendered near

Tunis. That then ended in a military

catastrophe compared by some to the

magnitude of the defeat at Staling.

250,000 German and Italian soldiers went

into

captivity. Militarily the defeat in

Tunis was the second very serious defeat

for the German Reich after stunning

blood. It became clear that it had lost

the initiative on several fronts and

their important ally Italy was on the

verge of

collapse. Thus, another of Hitler's

military ventures came to an abrupt end.

In addition to hundreds of thousands of

soldiers going into captivity, there

were at least 30,000 casualties on the

side of the Axis

[Music]

powers. On May 20th, the Allies

celebrated their victory with a military

parade in Tunis. General Dwight D.

Eisenhower, Allied Commanderin-Chief

during Operation Torch and later the US

President attended the triumphal

procession. British Prime Minister

Winston Churchill later wrote in his

memoirs, "No one could doubt the

greatness of the victory won in Tunisia.

Africa has been cleansed of the enemy. A

continent has been liberated."

Increased efforts in the German

armaments industry helped compensate for

the growing military superiority of the

allies. Albert Shpair had been

responsible for armaments manufacturing

since February of 1944 had reorganized

it. In addition to weapons, spare who

was equally popular with the furer and

the people was primarily concerned with

his image.

[Music]

Albert one can say was first and

foremost a man of staging and propaganda

not the least of which was the staging

of himself. So we first had a so-called

homeront propaganda which systematically

referred to the production wonders and

the achievements of the German armament

industry and which then very soon also

became intoxicated with its own

successes. But Albert actually succeeded

in significantly increasing output in

certain armament sectors.

The increases were due to the systematic

importation of foreign workers to the

Reich which was further accelerated

under Shpare. Thus, men and women from

the occupied territories toiled in

German factories for the insane idea of

final victory. Hundreds of thousands

suffered from malnutrition and

mistreatment or worked themselves to

death.

Forced laborers were quite central to

the German armament's industry and for

this war machine in general. Just

imagine that in 1944 there were 7.6

million forced laborers in the German

Reich and they kept the armament's

industry and industrial war production

going. This meant that the use of forced

laborers was a central element of the

national socialist war ideology and war

economy.

They were becoming increasingly

important and were being brought into

the ranch at ever greater expense

because they were a substitute, a cheap

substitute for the conscripted Germans

who were in the

B. Forced labor was on the whole a

program that was changing quite

dramatically in the overall tendency.

One can say that with the way in which

warfare had become more radicalized and

how the military tactical situation had

also deteriorated and became more acute

that to the same extent the ruthlessness

with which forced laborers had been

treated became more and more

acute also displayed particular

creativity when it came to presenting

his production figures.

[Music]

It's also important to emphasize that

Alberta always argued with growth rates

that were indeed

immense. But he liked to refer to

certain base dates when production was

particularly low and that these rates of

increase were particularly

impressive. and he really avoided ever

stating absolute production figures and

possibly relating them to the production

process potential of their

opponents. Of course, the German economy

didn't come close to what the Americans

in particular and also what the Soviets

produced. Even if it was possible to

increase the economy enormously, this

was helped strongly by the assembly line

procedure. On the German side, there was

only one factory making tanks, the

Nebulongan factory, which worked with an

assembly line method. For the Americans,

this was standard, and the Germans

simply couldn't match it. This fact was

neglected in Nazi propaganda. Instead,

they emphasized the alleged superiority

of their own weapons. In the summer of

1943, Albert Shpar and Joseph Gerbles

attended a staged tank race, the result

of which was probably already set before

the start.

[Music]

in the middle of the American.

[Music]

The completed tanks were urgently needed

to at least partially compensate for the

Vermach's heavy material losses. Many

combat vehicles left the factory for the

Eastern Front, where new offensive plans

were now being made after the recapture

of Karkov in March of that year.

Everyone was aware that the forces were

not enough for a large-scale offensive

as in 1941 and 1942, but there was a

frontal advance around the city of Ksk.

So, we could start an offensive, gain

ground, and demonstrate that you could

still attack and keep the initiative.

About 120 km of the frontal advance

around the city of Kursk protruded into

the German lines. It was to be

straightened as part of an offensive

that was given the code name Citadel.

Operational order number six from April

of 1943 stated, "Every leader, every man

must be imbued with the decisive

importance of this attack. The victory

at Kursk must act as a beacon to the

world." About 900,000 men were pulled

together for this on the German side.

They were opposed by at least 1.4

million Red Army troops, and they were

prepared when the German attack started

in early July. Within this frontal arc,

the Red Army had created a defense

system with a total of six defense

belts. And these defense lines which

were riddled with anti-tank trenches

with mines. Hundreds of thousands of

mines were laid and thousands of

kilometers of trenches were dug with

anti-tank bases and so on. It was

actually a very difficult system to

penetrate.

In the coming days, the largest tank

battle of the second world war unfolded

at Kursk. The shortcomings of the German

armament's industry under Albert Spear

quickly became apparent.

At the time, the Germans had an enormous

number of tanks, but they had no spare

parts. It would have been better, if you

will, to actually produce three tanks

and produce three tanks as spare parts.

But preferred to produce five tanks and

only one as a spare. And by the first

day of the attack of operation citadel,

one heavy tank division with tigers had

so many failures due to mines but no

spare parts. Right on first day, it

wasn't possible to repair all tanks. And

that was a consequence of spare's

policy. Always to impress only with

production figures, but nothing behind

it in resources where one could say we

have enough spare parts, enough

mechanics. All right, we're covered.

Even if we have failures, we can balance

it out.

[Music]

In the battle of Korsk, the tank units

had to fear not only the Red Army, but

also the vulnerability of their own

combat vehicles. In addition to type

four models, newer tanks such as the

Panther were also used. However, they

had numerous technical shortcomings. A

member of the first division of the SS

Panzer Regiment, too, noted, "We had to

take these cripples into action with, of

course, quite clearly expected results.

Propaganda studiously concealed such

experiences.

[Music]

[Music]

In the Battle of the Front Ark, the Vey

faced an almost inexhaustible reservoir

of Soviet units. After initial moderate

gains in space, the large-scale

offensive came to a halt.

After about two weeks at the latest, the

German offensive was over and the Soviet

side was on the counter offensive. And

then the second phase of the battle of

Ksk was at least from the German point

of view purely characterized by heavy

defensive fighting that you tried to

hold the front arc of oral as long as

possible at least to cover the retreat.

In mid August, the Red Army recaptured

Karkov for the second time that year.

The fighting that went down in history

as the battle of Korsk thus came to an

end with immense losses on both sides.

During the 50-day Kursk battle the Red

Army lost about 7,000 tanks. That means

broken, burned out, exploded about 7,000

tanks. The Viamat had about 1,200 tanks.

And so you have a loss ratio of 1:6.

With airplanes, the loss ratio was about

1:5. On the German side, you had a total

of 650 destroyed aircraft. On the Soviet

side, at least 3,000. But the most

difficult thing, however, was to

determine the personnel losses. On the

German side, they were about 200,000

men. On the Soviet side, at least 1.2

million. As a result of the tank battle

of Kusk, it became clear no matter what

they did, no matter how many Soviet

tanks they shot down, no matter how many

soldiers they captured or died in the

Red Army, they couldn't win this

militarily. And this raised the

question, what were the Germans supposed

to do? They couldn't really do anything

anymore because they couldn't destroy

more than 6,000 tanks in a few weeks.

Any other army would have had its back

broken. not so the Red Army. And so it

became clear in Operation Citadel that

the Germans could do whatever they

wanted. This had become a material war

which the Germans couldn't

win. Operation Citadel was the last

major German offensive on the Eastern

Front. From then on, more and more the

Red Army took the initiative. On the

26th of August, a few days after the end

of the battle of Korsk, it launched a

new offensive. The high command of the

Vey, meanwhile, had been faced with new

developments in another theater of war

for several weeks.

On July 10th, 1943, the Allies landed in

Sicily. At that very moment, Operation

Citadel was about a week old, and at

that moment, Hitler actually lost his

nerve a bit. He then contributed to the

attack being stopped a few days later

and he wanted to move his Vafen SS

divisions all the way from the eastern

front. In the end only one VFS division

the Lipstand Adolf Hitler was moved to

northern Italy but of course it showed

the interaction of the individual

theaters of war. It was a continental

war that the Germans faced there.

different fronts, France, the

Mediterranean, the Soviet Union, and

they were interconnected and interlocked

with each other, and the allies had the

upper hand in

mid-43. They had the initiative, and

they could determine where to attack.

For the landing, the Allies had pulled

together over a 100,000 troops,

including soldiers from the first US

Infantry Division, the Big Red One. The

traditionrich unit had previously fought

in North Africa and was now helping

bring Sicily under Allied control in

about a week. Everywhere, Americans,

Canadians, and British were encountering

the legacies of fascist rule. Destroyed

war equipment was repurposed by local

youth in the blink of an eye. The fall

of Sicily caused consternation in

warweary Italy, which quickly turned

into revolutionary sentiment and led to

personnel

consequences. Mussolini was deposed by

the fascist grand council on July 25th,

1941. There was also the king Victor

Emmanuel III and so Mussolini was no

longer the duche.

Petro Bado became the new prime

minister. Officially, the general

emphasized that he wanted to continue

fighting alongside the Third Reich, but

Italy and the Western powers were

unofficially approaching each other.

Secret peace negotiations were opened

during the fight for Sicily. About 4,600

Vermach soldiers were killed. Over

13,000 were

injured. Those who could not be cared

for locally were transferred home.

Clinics for the treatment and

rehabilitation of the wounded were set

up throughout the Reich, like here in

Befeld in West Failia. A doctor filmed

the progress of his patients. At the

moment when more and more fatally

wounded people streamed back from the

front, it became clear to everyone that

this would not have a good ending. Of

course, the propaganda in the tried to

glorify that.

Television was still in its infancy, but

it was used for propaganda. For example,

many clinics had TV sets where the

wounded could see their fellow

sufferers.

Fore! Foreign!

Foreign! Fore.

Whether the camera accompanied war

disabled people on an obstacle course or

at a dance class, the motto was always

everything's not so bad.

[Music]

[Music]

The staged images seem cynical from

today's perspective, but in the cold

logic of the regime, the images made

sense.

The cleverness of the Nazi propaganda

was that they showed that they didn't

say didn't pretend that no one was

killed. They also didn't pretend that

there were no wounded. No, there were

you could see them in the streets. They

were openly shown. But they were also

made into heroes. They had sacrificed

themselves. They had also paid their

price and we also recognized that.

Society recognizes that. That's why we

also showed them in the news reel as

well as invalid soldiers in a

convolescent home and so on. And with

that Nazi propaganda created a piece of

honesty if you didn't show that if you

only made beautiful pictures of healthy

soldiers then it would have become

untrustworthy because everybody saw them

on the street the limping people and

propaganda must always in order to be

effective contain a piece of truth.

On the 8th of September, the previously

negotiated ceasefire between Italy on

one side and the US and Britain on the

other became public

knowledge. Armistice with Italy has been

concluded. It is a great victory for the

United Nations, but it was also a great

victory for the Italian people. After

years of war and suffering and

degradation, the Italian people are at

last coming to the day of liberation

from their real enemies, the Nazis.

American and British troops began

landing on the Italian mainland in early

September near Salerno. In Berlin,

preparations had been made for this

eventuality. FAL Axis was the code name

of the operation which now responded to

the Allied landing

operation and the Germans made many

mistakes. But one thing they could do

was to react quickly to new

situations. They initiated Operation

Axis and managed to disarm hundreds of

thousands of Italian soldiers and

relatively quickly confronted the

advancing allies.

The allies had to fight their way north

with great difficulty. Only months later

was a US cameraman able to shoot this

footage in the Campa region. In the

meantime, the other side achieved a

brief success. Since his deposition,

Benito Mussolini had been held prisoner

in a hotel in Abbruto.

The Germans learned about it and the

idea now on the German side was to free

Mussolini. There was a command

operation. German command landed near

the mountain hotel. And the interesting

thing was why didn't the guards actually

just shoot Mussolini? Why didn't they

fight the German paratroopers? Today we

know that the official Italian

government said, "Well, then let the

Germans have Mussolini and quite

deliberately gave the order not to

shoot."

In midepptember, Hitler received the

liberated ally at the wolf's lair. The

duche was to preside over the so-called

Republic of Salo on Lake Garda and as

Hitler's puppet lead a fascist

countergovernment of Italy. In April of

1944, it would perish along with its

leader.

Ironic.

[Applause]

[Music]

We shall defend our island whatever the

task may be. We shall fight on the

beaches. We shall fight on the landing

grounds. We shall fight in the fields

and in the streets. We shall fight in

the hills. We shall never surrender.

[Music]

[Music]

The United States of America was

suddenly and deliberately attacked by

naval and air forces of the Empire of

Japan. We will gain the inevitable

triumph. So help us God.

[Applause]

[Music]

holiday as she is turned to the home of

[Applause]

Senator. The Nazis entered this war

under the rather childish delusion that

they were going to bomb everybody else

and nobody was going to bomb them.

[Music]

sing.

[Music]

[Music]

Dresden, June

1943. Cotton Kipken and Henry Rupe

exchanged wedding vows meticulously

documented on 35mm color film. It was a

piece of Ital almost 4 years after Adolf

Hitler had plunged the world into war.

The effects of the war were still barely

felt in the city which was not within

range of Allied bomber raids. A

situation that would not last forever.

Ever since the British Air Ministry had

issued the area bombing directive in

February of 1942, the number of air

raids on German cities had increased

significantly. The suffering of

civilians in particular was growing.

It was the British who more than any

other air power developed a system for

destroying a city with an air strike.

and the British developed a method which

they refined in

1943. The proportion of incendurary

bombs for example was much higher than

in the German attacks and so was the

tactic of using air mines. How that was

coordinated and how they used radio

control methods, master bombers that

guided the others. That was a completely

new procedure. It was now no longer if

we kill civilians, we kill civilians.

But the civilians became the main

target.

One area of focus for the attacks was

the rurer region with its heavy

industry. The images of destruction were

the same from city to city. Among other

cities in the rural area, Dortmund also

became a target. On the night of May

24th alone, 2,200 tons of incendurary

and demolition bombs fell on the city.

The Nazi leadership responded with a

large-scale propaganda event.

[Music]

[Music]

The venue for the production, the

Vestfallen Hala, filled with over 15,000

[Music]

spectators. Empty slogans of

perseverance for the population of the

rur region, which had been shaken by the

air war.

[Music]

[Music]

problematic. This is

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

There

is a disappear.

[Music]

The Battle of the Rar, which was a Royal

Air Force offensive, raged between March

and July of 1943, during which almost

all major German cities on the Rine and

Rur were bombed and thousands of people

were killed. The regime tried to

alleviate the plight of the victims.

[Music]

One of the clever responses to the chaos

caused by such carpet bombing was that

certain consumer goods were kept in

railroad cars until they were

needed. Some of which were also parked

in

tunnels and then they would be available

at relatively short notice.

If you were cynical, you'd say that Nazi

propaganda and Gbles used the bombings

as an opportunity, an opportunity to

expand the people's sense of community,

the Nazi

folks, because they understood great

need, great suffering. We have to help.

And who helped? the Nazi state. In the

face of massive destruction and high

casualty figures, pessimism and

resentment spread. However, open

criticism of the situation was not

tolerated under the Nazi

dictatorship. In the language of the

National Socialists, there was a

separation between morale and attitude,

and the morale could easily crumble at

one point or another. The regime also

acknowledged that or that there was

mourning over losses or worries and

hardships after bombing rates. But at

the same time, the decisive element was

the attitude in the language of Nazi

propaganda. And the attitude from the

regime's point of view seemed to be

quite stable for a long time.

In midsummer 1943, Hamburg became the

focus of Allied bombers. Before the

outbreak of the Second World War, around

1.7 million people lived in the Haniatic

City. Warships were also built there,

which provided work for tens of

thousands of people. That is why since

1940, the Hanziatic City had repeatedly

been the target of air

raids. In late July, the Allies launched

Operation Gamora, named after the

mythical city that, according to the

Bible, was buried under a rain of fire

and brimstone.

Operation

Gomorra. Operation Gomorrah was a

terrifying horrific special event in the

air war. The British managed to knock

out the German defense by building

German radars with strips of aluminium

foil, thus eliminating the German night

fighter force. Therefore, these bombers

could fly over the city relatively

undisturbed. Hamburg was easy to get to.

Hamburg was easy to find. They also had

radar devices that could find and hit

the city with relative precision.

Hamburg was attacked in several waves.

The most devastating occurred on the

night of July 27th. More than 100,000

explosive and incendurary bombs fell on

the city which quickly went up in

flames. The hot midsummer weather that

prevailed during those days bolstered

the spread of the fires.

They attacked certain districts east of

the Alster which were densely built up

and the British managed to set off a

firestorm in this densely built up area.

And it was this firestorm that was

destructive and deadly because the

attack was long over. The fire developed

such power, a huracanlike force, and it

couldn't be extinguished. And so,

Hamburg burned for days, and even the

Hamburg Fire Department and the Hamburg

Civil Defense were not immune to the

bombing. And that's why the civilian

casualty figures were so immensely high.

The firestorm raged for over 5 hours in

eastern Hamburg. Many streets in the

city center also fell victim to the

bombardment. By the end of Operation

Gomorrah, a total of around 35,000

people had been

[Music]

killed. They suffocated in air raid

shelters, burned to death in the

streets, or were killed by falling

debris. Over a 100,000 residents were

injured. In Berlin, the situation there

was noted with concern.

The effect on people like Albert or

Goubbles was considerable and they

thought what if this is going to happen

to us more often now a firestorm of this

magnitude so many dead for God's sake

what will the German population do then

can we then hold out against a war but

not every city was built like Hamburg

you also had to realize that it's

relatively hard to kill 40,000 people in

a city it did work in Hamburg ultimately

the effect on morale, on the ability to

wage war remained limited. At least half

of Hamburg's apartments were destroyed.

A contemporary witness wrote, "From the

Vansbeck Marian Tal train station to the

main train station, not one house is

left. You are now completely homeless

because it will take a 100red years to

rebuild." Those who didn't flee to the

countryside had to come to terms with

the danger of further attacks. The

propaganda invoked the concept of Vulcim

shaft in which everyone pitches in. This

news reel from the fall of

1943 shows boys and girls helping to

clear up bomb damage.

Since the beginning of their movement,

the Nazis had attached special

importance to children. After seizing

power, they forced their influence on

the younger generation.

kindergarten. When they attended

kindergarten, they were looked after by

teachers who had received national

socialist and ideological training. When

they went to school, the only teachers

were ones who had a positive attitude

toward national

socialism. Their free time was organized

by national socialist

organizations. Therefore, both the

National Socialist Insignia and the

Hitler Salute were part of their normal

everyday

life. And the youth organization Hitler

Youth was founded as early as the mid

1920s. The National Socialists pursued

clear

goals. For the National Socialists, this

had a double meaning. First, the

National Socialists saw themselves as a

form of youth movement.

So that means as an organization that

mobilized the youth compared to the

established parties to the

bureaucracies and secondly and this

played a central role in the founding of

the Hitler youth was the access to

youth. The possibility of systematic

ideologization uniforming and

militarization of those for whom this

third in its self-image at least was now

competing.

As in all areas of Nazi society,

soldiering was glorified in the Hitler

Youth. At the Reich Party Congresses in

Nuremberg, Hitler Youth delegations

quickly became a permanent fixture. At

the so-called Party Congress of Freedom

in September of 1935, Adolf Hitler

addressed the young people in attendance

and outlined his ideals for the next

generation.

[Applause]

I must fight to you.

[Applause]

Baldor von pictured here to the right of

Hitler was supposed to be part of that.

The German language and literature

student was appointed the first Rash

youth leader by the dictator in 1940. He

was replaced by his previous deputy Arur

Axman. In a way, Balto and Axman were

the prototypes of the youth political

functionaries of the third rank.

They were also well educated,

academically educated functionaries who

entered the Nazi movement relatively

early on and who shaped the Hitler Youth

and they did so in a very special way.

Namely, they turned the Hitler Youth,

which was initially only a party

organization into a state youth

organization. And this process was part

of this ideologization of youth in the

Third Reich.

Uniforms of the Bun Deutsche Maidel or

League of German Girls and the Hitler

Youth soon became part of everyday life

in the cities of the Reich as seen here

during a march in Offenborg Boden. Young

people learned to march in step at an

early age and were socialized in a

military way.

The Hitler youth was characterized first

by the idea of the fur by being a leader

by youth leads youth as a guiding

principle. Secondly, it was

characterized by a concept of loyalty

and morality loyalty to the fa and the

national socialist morality linked to

very specific conditions to racism as an

essential principle. And thirdly, it

meant militarization.

For the regime, young people were first

and foremost one thing, military

recruits. A film shows the seemingly

self-evident development from Hitler

youth to

[Music]

soldier. In the youth organization,

there were specializations for careers

in the army. In the naval Hitler youth,

preparation for a career in the naval

forces took place.

[Music]

Six sports schools were established in

which the next generation was trained.

An integral part of the education was

also the use of military auxiliary

activities.

Atlantic

[Music]

Island. Contrary to what these pictures

suggest, the period of great successes

for German submarines by 1943 was over.

The cracking of the Enigma code and the

increasing air supremacy of the Allies

in the North Atlantic put a heavy strain

on that military branch. Any

encouragement, however small, was

welcome.

Help

me

[Music]

[Music]

in shift

[Music]

vessel.

Fore! Foreign! Foreign!

[Music]

National socialism as a total

dictatorship needed the cooperation of

all parts of the population. the

convinced cooperation and therefore it

was very important to indoctrinate the

children in line with the regime in

order to subdue any resistance or

criticism of the state because it was

clear that the system was designed for

expansion. That meant that you needed

soldiers. You needed a population that

was loyal to the regime and willing to

carry the ideas of national socialism

out into the world

in order to realize its dream of a

thousand-year Reich. The regime also

needed a future leadership

elite. They were to be trained in

national socialist fortresses.

[Music]

There were only three of these Nazi

cadres training centers in the Reich

Fogang in the Eiffel Zen in the Algoy

and Cresen in Pomerania.

In practice, the students who went there

and the curriculum that was taught there

was of course centrally influenced by

the national socialist world of ideas

and that subjects such as racial studies

and things like that were specifically

added to the curriculum in order to

finish high school and military training

that is the physicality of the education

played a central

role. According to Robert Lie, head of

the German labor front who had created

the schools, living tools of the furer

were to be created in these training

centers.

[Music]

[Music]

After their training, many of the kids

were among the regime's most fanatical

supporters and participated in war

crimes in the east. There, the situation

for the Veyt deteriorated steadily.

After the battles of Stalingrad and

Korsk, the Red Army launched another

offensive on a broad section of the

front between the Black Sea in the south

and Viteps in the north. It took place

in August of the same

year. The increasing Soviet superiority

made it difficult for German soldiers

not to lose faith in the final victory.

It's actually holding on to hope. You

ask yourself, how could they hold out

for so long? Although it was actually

clear after the battle of Kusk and after

these retreats that this couldn't be

done militarily. One wonders, of course,

how they were able to go on for so long,

how they were able to motivate the

soldiers to fight and you shouldn't

underestimate the hope factor. On the

one hand, there was always the hope that

the Fura was a genius, that the Fura was

still going to do it, that the Fura was

going to pull something out of the air,

some miracle weapon, or that he still

had some reserves.

In September, in the central and

southern sections of the eastern front,

the Vey had to withdraw further to the

western bank of the Deniper. The

campaign continued to result in enormous

losses. On an average day of war, six

times as many German soldiers died in

Russia as in the West.

Above all, it was the loss of personnel

that was so painful. There was less and

less infantry. As a result, victories

were no longer possible. Take 1941. The

great victories were largely won by the

infantry, less by the tanks. And that

was completely missing now. And the East

Army was bleeding to death. They were

only getting half as many

replacements. In early November, the Red

Army liberated Kiev. Since the autumn of

1941, the city, like all of Ukraine, had

been under German rule. The appointed

Raj Kamisar Eric K wrote, "The goal of

our work must be that the Ukrainians

work for Germany. Ukraine has to supply

what Germany lacks. This task must be

carried out regardless of casualties. In

Kiev alone, 150,000 prisoners of war and

civilians were

murdered. A Red Army dog squadron on its

way to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The animals can detect explosives,

injured or dead people, and were

supposed to help secure the complex

after the city was taken. Soviet

propaganda units were also filming.

signs of the German occupiers. Silent

witnesses of the racist policies of

domination. Cafes, stores, and theaters

were forbidden to Ukrainians and

Russians. The attitude of the Germans in

the Rash Commasarat is determined by the

view that we are dealing with a people

who are inferior in every respect. Raj

Kasar Kau had noted by autumn of 1943,

the madness about the master race in

Kiev was

over. A few weeks later, the Red Army

achieved a prestigious victory in the

northern section of the front.

Lennengrad had been under siege by the

Vmach since September of

1941. A deliberate decision was made not

to take the city. Instead, Hitler

ordered it to be cut off and then left

to its own devices. At least 1 million

people died during the blockade. The

majority of the victims starved to

death.

Lennengrad was actually like a

magnifying glass for the radicality and

totality of this war because on the one

hand for the Germans cities had always

been besieged. Since ancient times there

had always been famines in besieged

cities. That's nothing new. But the new

aspect was to not accept the surrender

of a city at all. That was the plan. And

also to raise the city to the ground.

But it was the same thing on the Soviet

side. No matter how many people died,

the main thing was to hold Lannenrad and

to continue to produce weapons and do

everything to supply the front line. The

conditions were terrible. The party

cards took care of themselves and it was

the ordinary people who had to suffer

massively

here. In January 1944, the Soviets

launched an offensive to finally

liberate Leningrad. The attackers met

weakened defenders because Army Group

North had to face a dramatic situation

on other sections of the front and had

to give up units. On January 27th, the

former Russian capital was liberated.

The 18th German army under Colonel

General Lindamman withdrew towards the

Baltic states.

in the Kremlin. It wasn't just stories

of military successes by the Red Army

that could be enjoyed in those

months. By the autumn of 1943, the

Soviets had achieved an important

success on the propaganda front just

outside Moscow. The focus was on a

number of prominent German prisoners of

war.

After the victory at Stalingrad, it was

clear to the Soviets, especially after

the victory at Kusk, that they would win

the war. But the big question was at

what cost? The losses were still

enormous. And then there arose the

consideration, well, what else could we

do to somehow end the war faster?

Perhaps we can also supply pressure to

the allies, the Western Allies, so they

will finally open a second front.

Then they had the idea, we still have 22

generals captured in Stalingrad. That

would be super if we could use them now

to use their indignation at Hitler,

their feeling of being betrayed to

threaten with a German opposition

government to threaten the allies to say

maybe we can come to an agreement with

the Germans if we already have an

opposition government which is even

supported by the conservative military.

Valto von Ziditz Kzbach became president

of the BDO. The general of the artillery

called for resistance against the Hitler

dictatorship.

[Applause]

for that appeal was not seen in the

German Reich. Here the propaganda

concentrated on its own success stories.

A favorite topic remained the

development of new weapons to help

compensate for the increasing losses of

men and material. Adolf Hitler attended

a demonstration of the so-called rail

wolf. The device was designed to render

tracks unusable for the enemy, thus

limiting their mobility.

[Music]

Hitler had a soft spot for this sort of

stuff.

He was technically approachable and saw

himself as an architect. He drew bunker

plans and so on. And the great designers

knew that. And of course, they also

wanted to sell their

weapons. So if you could get direct

access to Hitler and convince him that

you have designed a great weapon, you

could then sell him your product by

passing the hierarchy so to

speak. And someone who understood this

brilliantly was

Vaner. for Venafon Brown. Vanfon Brown

worked on the development of new types

of rockets at the Army's research

institute on USADOM. The focus of his

research was the development of the

liquidfueled V2 rocket. After the

rocket's reliable flight capability was

achieved, it was fitted with 1,00 kg

explosive devices and renamed Vengeance

Weapon 2. By the end of the war, over

3,000 of these V2s were fired at

England, Belgium, and France.

The B2 was actually a technically very

modern device that kicked off the

development of the moon

rocket. But it was actually wonderful

for the allies that the Germans built it

because it was so incredibly expensive

and so incredibly

complex. If the Germans had built

conventional weapons, airplanes, tanks,

could they have done much more things

with those? And to what effect? The

military

effect a few thousand civilians were

killed by them in Anthe in London and

other cities but the military effect was

of course almost

zero. Meanwhile, Nazi political

celebrities never got tired of praising

the wonder weapon V2. By the end of June

1943, Hinrich Himmler saw a

demonstration of the rocket in

Panamunda. The test was a sobering

experience. And so the SS Reichfur

quickly turned his attention to other

topics. A few weeks later, he gave a

particularly explosive speech at the

town hall in Posen, which had been

preserved as an audio document. It is

one of the few sources in which a

prominent Nazi politician spoke openly

about the mass murder of the Jewish

population of Europe.

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

This in the meantime, railroad wagons

full of people were rolling from all

over Europe to the extermination camps

in the east. As part of Operation

Reinhardt, which had been launched some

15 months earlier, the National

Socialists had by the fall of

1943, murdered more than 2 million Jews

and Roma. Any attempt to resist, such as

the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto in the

spring of that year, was put down with

extreme violence. The inhuman murder

machinery of the National Socialists was

in full swing.

Meanwhile, in the Pacific, the World War

raged on. After winning the Battle of

Guadal Canal in the Solomon Islands, US

troops reached the Gilbert Islands in

November. The archipelago was to be

captured as part of the so-called

Operation Galvanic. To accomplish this,

more than 25,000 men of the US Marine

Corps were ready. The Gilberts were only

an interim target for the American

Navy. They wanted to go from island to

island, from the south to get closer to

the Japanese mother islands. They wanted

to get close enough to the Japanese

mother islands so that they could use

the air force against major Japanese

cities and armament factories.

At 5:00 in the morning on November 20th,

the attack on Tarowa, the main atal of

the Gilberts, started. The fighting

troops were accompanied by war

correspondents who produced impressive

images of the fighting that later formed

the basis for the propaganda film with

the Marines at Tarawa. The landing gis

met stubborn resistance from the

Japanese defenders.

It isn't easy knocking those Japs out of

their positions. They're hidden in

trees, behind repetments, buried pill

boxes, bomb proofs, bunkers. This bunker

is giving us plenty of trouble. We have

orders to clean it

out. This is what we found on the other

side.

Many of the Japanese soldiers would

rather die than surrender to the enemy.

And so every meter was fought for. Only

after days of fighting did the Americans

win the battle. But it was an expensive

victory. These are Marine dead.

This is the price we have to pay for a

war we didn't want. And before it's

over, there'll be more dead on other

battlefields.

Around a thousand gis were killed

capturing the ATL, which is only a few

square kilometers in size. Countless

more bloody battles lay ahead for the US

troops before they defeated Hitler's

fanatically fighting ally, Japan.

Meanwhile, on the European continent,

the Third Reich prepared for the Allied

landing, which was expected sooner or

later on the northern French coast.

Troops and material were moved westward

on a large scale. In addition, Hitler

sent one of his most outstanding

generals to the area. Van Ruml, who had

achieved fame in North Africa as the

Desert Fox, took up his command in

France at the end of

1943 and reported directly to the Furer.

RML arrived in the west at the end of

1943 with orders to improve the

defensive position there. And RML also

succeeded carrying out a large

construction program to really

strengthen the so-called Atlantic Wall

with bunkers, buildings, with

minefields, with the so-called Romel

asparagus logs against airborne troops.

Infantry company.

[Music]

Raml was probably chosen because he was

one of the most popular German army

commanders who for a long time willingly

placed himself in the services of Nazi

propaganda. Here the then 52year-old let

himself be filmed addressing his

soldiers.

[Music]

Despite isolated progress in fortifying

the installations, the unbridgegable

Atlantic wall remained a myth. Thousands

of kilometers of coastline could not be

protected efficiently. A few months

after these photographs were taken,

Allied troops would land in Normandy.

The Atlantic Wall would not be able to

prevent the success of Operation

Overlord. Even RML couldn't do anything

about that. On the day of the landing,

he was on home leave. In southern

Europe, the Allies were already on the

continent by the fall of 1943.

Anglo-American troops had been on the

Italian mainland since September. Their

goal, the conquest of Rome.

The vehic which had triggered the

so-called axis case and occupied the

country after the loss of its Italian

ally withdrew to a defensive line about

100 km south of the Italian capital. At

this so-called Gustaf line, the Allied

advance initially came to a standstill.

The VMA lost the ability to attack in 43

and all counteratt attacks during the

Allied landings such as at Salano in

September 43

failed. But what they could still do was

defend and defensive measures are

actually tactically easier to conduct

than offensive measures. That's why the

Viamat, even with their thinned out

units, after all, there were heavy

losses, still managed to behave

tactically well on the defensive and

they had combat

experience. They had been in this war

for a long time and so they managed to

hold the front line here for a long time

through this combination of factors,

including the inexperience of the allies

and the inability of the allies to

adjust tactically to the German way of

fighting.

Monte Casino lies on the Gustaf line, a

mountain with an ancient Benedictine

Abbey on top. From there, access to the

valley of the Liry River could be

controlled, through which an advance all

the way to Rome was easily possible. The

allies were therefore pushing for its

capture.

Montto Casino is very difficult terrain.

It's not that very high, about 500

meters high, but it's a steep terrain,

mountainous terrain. You can't operate

there very much with tanks and the like.

And the Germans were clinging to the

mountains with everything they had, with

very experienced troops who knew how to

fight in mountainous terrain, even in

the town of Casino. They were very

experienced troops whose division

general used to be a tactics instructor

and who knew how to wage war in this

terrain.

In January 1944, the battle for the

mountain began. Numerous cultural

treasures were in the abbey and were

also at

risk. The German news reel reported.

So far, the had been more prominent in

this war for the theft of cultural

treasures than for their

[Music]

protection.

Historical books, paintings, writings,

and building plans found temporary

shelter in the former mosoleum of the

Roman Emperor

[Music]

Hadrien. In midFebruary, the US Air

Force bombed Monte Casino. The abbey on

the mountain was largely destroyed and

at least 250 civilians were killed. As a

result, the ruins provided the German

units with ideal conditions for defense.

A bloody battle broke out that lasted

for months.

[Music]

In this battle, thousands upon thousands

of soldiers on both sides died. But both

military leaders were of course willing

to pay that price because what would

have been the alternative? The allies

would have had to say, "Okay, we'll

agree to a draw." I don't think that

would have happened. You had to win the

war. And if you then lose a few

thousands of people, then that's the way

it is. And for the Germans, after all,

there was no alternative because the

question was, if they withdrew, where

was a better defensive position?

It was not until midMay that Allied

units succeeded in taking Monte Casino.

More than 50,000 of their soldiers had

previously been killed or wounded. The

Vey estimated the losses on the German

side at 20,000 men. The road to Rome was

clear. On the 4th of June 1944, GIS of

the US Fifth Army entered the Italian

capital without a fight. Rome had

previously been declared a free city,

but the war in Italy was far from over.

Fierce fighting followed in central and

northern Italy that would last until the

spring of

[Music]

1945.

[Music]

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

foreign. We shall defend our island

whatever the cost may be. We shall fight

on the beaches. We shall fight on the

landing grounds. We shall fight in the

fields and in the streets. We shall

fight in the hills. We shall never

surrender.

[Music]

[Music]

The United States of America was

suddenly and deliberately attacked by

naval and air forces of the Empire of

Japan. We will gain the inevitable

triumph. So help us God.

[Applause]

holiday.

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

The Nazis entered this war under the

rather childish delusion that they were

going to bomb everybody else and nobody

was going to bomb them.

[Music]

sing.

[Music]

[Music]

In the spring of 1944, Germany was

firmly in the grip of war. The Allies

had long since gained air supremacy over

the Third Reich. German cities were hit

by bombing raids almost daily.

Apocalypse was normal. The war had

arrived on the home front, and its

catastrophic course could no longer be

concealed.

[Music]

The bombing of cities like Cologne,

Bremen, Hamburg and Berlin was part of

everyday life of a significant part of

the German population. The war was quite

close at hand in and around the Reich,

especially since we're talking about

massive losses on the part of the German

civilian population as well as the

massive losses in the BMA. That means

that from the regime's point of view,

the war was not going at all as they

imagined.

Nevertheless, maintaining the morale of

the people was the job of the homeront

dictator, Joseph Gobles. In his function

as Gowiter of Berlin, he personally took

charge of the fate of the bombed out

citizens. Perseverance was the motto.

The mood could certainly crumble in one

place or another. The regime conceded

that or that there was sadness about

losses or worries and hardships after

bombing raids. But at the same time, the

decisive factor was the people's

attitude in the language of Nazi

propaganda and the attitude seemed to be

quite stable for a long time from the

regime's point of view.

The Germans reacted differently to the

tense situation with fanatical defiance,

with equinimity, or even fatalistic

resignation. Above all, faith in Adolf

Hitler helped many to persevere.

The cult of the fur was very important

because the fur despite all the disputes

that existed in the system including the

conflicting interests of internal groups

and organizations. The fur was always

seen as a figure of identification as

the one who held everything together and

brought it all together and really also

as a kind of luminous figure. If one

assumed that national socialism was an

atheistic regime, then the fur took on a

quasi godlike

character. Despite major failures in the

second half of the war, which more and

more couldn't be denied, the Hitler cult

nevertheless remained intact to a large

degree because Hitler was the central

figure to whom people had already been

orienting themselves for years and there

had been no alternative for a long time.

up. The dictator hadn't been seen in

Berlin for quite some

time. On the occasion of his 55th

birthday, Hitler's most loyal supporter,

Joseph Gerbles, organized a propaganda

event in the capital in his absence on

April 20th to demonstrate the loyalty of

the Folks Mineshaft. A parade was held

on Den Linden for the Fura as well as

for the national socialist news

reel. in the

right list

[Music]

in Vice Minister Dr.

[Music]

G

for Susanna.

Hitler. You also had to demonstrate a

touch of normality in

1944. Since everyone knew that April

20th was an important date, Hitler

somehow had to show himself. He rarely

spoke. He rarely appeared in public. So

they had to stage something. Gerbble's

speech in the Schluto at the concert of

the Berlin Filmonic Orchestra and so on.

That was the minimum program put

together to show that Hitler was still

there and he was still alive.

Instead of building more and more

fighter planes for defensive battles

against the Allies, Hitler ordered the

production of mainly bombers. Weapons

designed to impede the Allied advance

also met with the Furer's approval, such

as this device for destroying railroad

tracks. Hitler didn't comment publicly

on the devastation of the air war.

He left it to goubbles all this

propaganda work and withdrew more and

more from the public eye. Officially of

course this was with work overload.

Hitler was as it was already described

in the propaganda day and night for

Germany's victory and Germany's fate and

therefore he had no time to make

speeches. But of course it was also

connected with this with this loss of

prestige that he then withdrew from

public life and thus this myth of course

continued to have an

impact for most of the year. Hitler

retreated to Burgof in the Berkusan

Alps. The dictator who had always been

confident of his effect on the masses

gave only three radio speeches in 1944

and made no public appearances.

Gerbalt tried for months to persuade

Hitler to give a speech in public to

give the people hope again and Hitler

didn't want to. He always said first we

need victories again. So as things were,

he didn't want to do them.

In view of the lack of success on all

fronts, the dictator increasingly

doubted his general's willingness to

persevere. Hitler didn't tolerate

criticism of his decisions. No one in

his entourage dared to point out to the

commander-in-chief the hopelessness of

the situation. On the

contrary, there was this famous scene at

where Hitler gathered his generals and

shouted at them and I expect the

generals to stand around me with their

sabers drawn to defend me till the end.

Then field marshal for Manstein stood up

and said yes my fur that's exactly how

it will be.

Meanwhile, in the capital, which had

been hit by numerous Allied bombing

raids, the air raid alarms blared more

and more often, and not just at night.

Since March of 1944, US bombers had also

been conducting daytime air raids on

Berlin. More than half a million

civilians would fall victim to the

bombing. Joseph Gerbles held the fort

for his furer in the capital of the

Reich. The minister of propaganda used

every opportunity as a stage for the

news reel.

In his capacity as the Gowiter of

Berlin, Gerbles was close to the people.

Nazi propaganda unscrupulously presented

the Berliners as steadfast heroes of the

air war.

[Music]

just had a built-in instinct to give the

people what they

wanted. Of course, because he had a

large news network that he could pick

from where fluctuations and reversals

were also perceived, registered, passed

on, and then reacted to.

The Germans were to be kept happy until

the bitter end. The Minister of

Propaganda had vaudeville and cinema

performances moved from bombed out

venues to buildings that were still

intact. Entertainment during total

war. The news reels did not show the

true face of war. Amateur footage of a

funeral for bombing victims in Nordonham

near Bremaen revealed the grief and

despair of the people. Despite the

horror and fear, Germans had to go on

with their daily lives day after

[Music]

day. The challenge especially for women

in the war was very high. Most of the

men were at the front or dead or

missing. Life was hard every

day. Imagine that you had to work 10

hours in a factory, then come home, take

care of the children, do homework. Then

there were air raids at night. You

couldn't sleep. You're afraid. The

children are afraid. And the next day,

it starts all over again. And the whole

thing is fraught with a lot of

uncertainty as to whether everyone would

even survive.

The allies were already preparing for

the next blow against the Third Reich,

the invasion on the coast of northern

France. The onslaught was to be stopped

by the so-called Atlantic Wall, a chain

of defensive positions on the Channel

Coast. The hero of the failed African

campaign, Field Marshall Erin Romel, was

responsible for protecting the Reich's

borders on the Atlantic. He was

responsible for the expansion of the

fortifications and making them

impregnable.

However, this Atlantic wall wasn't

finished yet. It was a wall with big

gaps. You can't think of it as a wall.

It was more or less like a string of

pearls with several points loosely

connected. Here's where the focus of the

combatants were. The coastline between

Cala and Normandy. The Germans weren't

sure exactly where the landings would

take place. The expansion of the

defensive facilities faltered due to the

disastrous war situation, which meant

that supplies weren't coming in. Ruml

recognized the hopelessness of the

venture and put all his eggs in one

basket.

It was clear to the Germans where the

allies would land. They would either

come in at the Padal or in Normandy. In

the end, the Germans and especially RML

chose the and that was the wrong

choice. In England, meanwhile, the

Allies preparations were in full swing.

The decision of where to land had

already been decided. A different

location than what the Germans expected.

[Music]

Normandy was chosen because Padal, which

would allow a shorter channel crossing,

was relatively well fortified by the

Germans and Normandy had the great

advantage of being conveniently

located. One could approach from all

ports. The whole of southern England

resembled a huge army camp. The allies

prepared for the invasion with elaborate

maneuvers. In the meantime, their

intelligence services launched

deliberate deceptive maneuvers to

mislead the Germans. Fictitious units

were set up and dummy tanks and aircraft

were used to make the Vmach believe that

a channel crossing would take place at

Calala. Germany first was Winston

Churchill's motto. The only thing the

British couldn't agree on with the

commander and chief of the Americans,

Dwight D. Eisenhower, was the timing of

the landing on the continent.

And then there's the question of when,

and that was a big point of contention

between the Americans and the British.

The British didn't really want to do it

at all. Ultimately, the British wanted

to defend their empire and wanted to

secure the Mediterranean. The Americans

said, "What on earth are we doing in the

Mediterranean?" And then ultimately got

their way. But there was a struggle over

the crucial question when would they

have enough landing craft.

And while a material battle of gigantic

proportions was being prepared on the

Atlantic, there was a festive mood in

Oba Zaltzburg. Ava Brown's younger

sister Gretle married SS Gupen Furer

Hinrich Fageline on June 3rd, 1944. The

Furer was also present at the reception

at the Bearov near Berta's garden. The

celebrations among Hitler's closest

friends lasted 3 days. No one here

seemed to be thinking about a possible

defeat. Hitler was convinced that he

could turn back the allies in

France. Hitler's strategy was as

follows. We can lose ground in the east

and that wouldn't threaten our but in

the west if the western allies land

there, they could immediately advance

into the ruer and thus capture the heart

of our industry. Therefore, Hitler

ordered reinforcements to be sent to the

west in the future.

But by the 4th of June, the Germans had

lost the capital of their most important

ally. The Vey had been unable to hold

Rome and had declared it an open city.

The allies now marched in in triumph and

the Romans enthusiastically celebrated

their liberation.

Enraged, they stormed the Palazzo

Venetsia, the former seat of government

of their duche Benito

Mussolini. Fascism has never been as

strongly entrenched in Italy as national

socialism was in Germany. Mussolini had

been deposed by the fascist Grand

Council. It was of course inconceivable

that somehow a national socialist ran

council would depose Hitler and in Italy

at least part of the population saw the

state as corrupt and didn't see why they

should fight for this fascist state. Of

course there were a few but not as many

as in Germany. And actually in Italy war

fatigue was much greater than in

Germany. And it was clear it was over.

German soldiers were taken prisoner. The

Vmach was able to delay the advance of

US troops in southern Italy for half a

year. However, they had nothing to go

against the Allied superiority in men

and material. The German military

leadership drew no conclusions from the

defeat for its future strategy.

And so now you could say that the fall

of Rome didn't really matter. But the

big question was, how were they actually

going to stop the Allied advance? Did

they have any means at all to ever

become offensive again? They didn't

really have

that and they didn't really learn from

it. The real problem that actually

existed was that the allies landed in

Salano in September of 43 and in Anion

near Rome in January of 44. And both

landing operations were a bit of a

prelude, very similar to the procedure

to the later landing in Normandy, which

was bigger of course, but in similar

principle, and the Germans found they

couldn't stop the allies. It was really

a principle of hope. But the prelude as

to how D-Day would play out had already

been experienced on a smaller scale in

Italy, and both battles were

lost. In England, the Allied

commander-in-chief, General Eisenhower,

was planning the final details of the

invasion. It was important to determine

the right time. The landing had already

been postponed several times due to bad

weather

conditions. Eisenhower, the man with the

final say was Eisenhower. He was the

commanderin-chief. There was a

structure. The British and the Americans

had divided the world into theaters of

war and Eisenhower gave the orders. But

of course, he also had to coordinate

with the British. But he had the final

word. And the weather, after all, gets

bad in early

June. So bad that the Germans didn't

think they could land at all. And then,

for example, RML went to see his wife

for her birthday. And that's when

Eisenhower gave the green light.

Eisenhower.

On June 3rd, 1944, the first Allied

troops boarded ships. More than 1 and a

half million US soldiers were standing

by for Operation Overlord. They were

joined by nearly 20 divisions of

British, Canadians, Poles, and Free

French. The German troops couldn't grasp

the scale of the attack until it had

already begun.

The Normandy landings were indeed one of

the very great failures of German

intelligence. It was a complete surprise

that the largest amada in the history of

the world could wham suddenly appear at

dawn off the coast of Normandy like a

rabbit coming out of a top hat who said

oops here I am. There was no round table

of intelligence services in Germany who

said so what have we heard from which

sources and what is now the most

probable but rather the air force did

its own thing the navy did its own thing

it was a complete muddle and that of

course meant in principle that a

surprise could

succeed all began in the early morning

hours of June June 6th,

1944. Dday, decision

day. The Allies had assembled an Amada

the likes of which the world had never

seen. Over 5,000 ships, including 4,000

landing craft, and over 1,000

battleships, cruisers of various kinds.

And so on the first day alone, this

amada put about 130,000 men a shot.

The soldiers were preparing to land on

nearly 100 km of beach. The battle would

be won or lost within 24 hours. There

was no plan B. If the Allied troops

failed, there would be no second chance.

There was no turning back.

The Allied landings were meticulously

planned. First, Allied naval artillery

was to open fire on the German position.

Shortly thereafter, squadrons of Allied

bombers would continue to bomb the

German positions. And only shortly

thereafter would the landing fleet start

to come in and quickly overcome the

bunkers and move inland.

But from the start, heavy seas hampered

the operation. Ships drifted for miles.

Landing craft capsized. Soldiers drowned

with their heavy equipment in the

freezing waters.

The soldiers knew that they would have

to land at low tide and run for more

than 800 m with no cover and that this

was probably not going to be a walk in

the park. Some of them had experienced

similar landing operations in Italy, but

the hope was always that the Allied fire

would be so strong that they would get

through it all right. But a lot of

bomber squadrons had missed the German

positions. There was little cover. The

soldiers had to run directly into German

fire with their eyes open.

Allied casualties on the various beaches

varied widely, ranging from a few

hundred, for example, at Sort Beach or

Utah Beach 2, 3 to 4,000 at Omaha Beach,

the famous bloody Omaha. However,

despite all these losses, they were not

as high as Allied planners had

originally planned on. They had expected

to suffer up to 10,000 casualties on the

first day of landing alone.

Whoever gained the upper hand on this

longest day held the key to occupied

Europe. World War

II. It's the great battle that signified

the beginning of the liberation of

Western

Europe. For the British, it was the last

great military victory for their army in

a conventional

way. If you compare it to other battles

in world history, the battle of the Som

or Stalingrad or whatever, June the 6th,

1944 was not a particularly bloody day.

And it's so hyped up, particularly in

American history. So, it has a lot of

historical significance. But it wasn't

because of the casualties. There were

other days in the Battle of Normandy

that were bloodier for the soldiers.

On June 6th, the Allies also dropped

troops on the continent. During the

night, about 20,000 men landed behind

the front lines. They too had to

struggle with considerable difficulties.

On D-Day, the Allies landed not only

from the sea, but they also used

paratroopers and cargo gliders in the

rear to occupy areas from the rear and

prevent the Germans from getting

reinforcements to the landing

points.

American losses were quite high because

the Germans had damned up the rivers

there because they had also built

obstacles against cargo gliders in which

the material some of the material was

transported. Some parachuted, some

landed in gliders and it was quite a

considerable fighting force which also

ensured that the Americans could advance

in land from the beach relatively

quickly and that also prevented the

first German counterattacks.

In the morning, they fought their way to

their units. In land, the Allied troops

suffered unexpectedly high

losses. Allied planning prior to the

landing was totally focused on the

amphibious landing itself. The planners

weren't really aware of what happened

next. And contrary to expectations, the

Germans put up dogged resistance,

especially in the hatchros of Normandy

in the so-called

Bkash. There were major battles in a

very small area where the Allies advance

was bloody moving from field to field

and sometimes these fields were no

larger than 100 by 100 meters. And there

were also American reports that refer

events there to a jungle war which

reminded some of the war in the

Pacific. There were six weeks of heavy

fighting in Normandy, very similar to

trench warfare in the First World War.

In terms of casualties, the battle was

similar to that of And for many

participants, this battle was one of the

most formative of their lives.

And you can also glean that from German

files how officers, high-ranking

officers who experienced this

experienced this battle and how

thousands, tens of thousands of Germans

died there. And by the way, the allies

had similar losses, but then they

realized that they were no match against

Allied superiority and how that changed

their view of the

war. defend it. Commander and Chief Ruml

tried to convince Hitler that the

situation was hopeless. He stubbornly

insisted on them holding the front, but

the Allies fighting strength and air

superiority were overwhelming. German

counter offensives came to

nothing. For these Germans, the war was

over. Going into captivity was easier

for them than for their comrades on the

Eastern Front.

If you look at German casualty figures

at the end of the Battle of Normandy,

400,000 soldiers died, were wounded or

became Allied prisoners of war. At the

same time, there were about 600,000

German casualties on the Eastern Front.

The big difference, however, is that

German losses in the West were largely

due to captivity. It was clear to German

soldiers that as a prisoner of war of

the allies, you were likely to be

treated somewhat in accordance with the

Geneva Conventions. And so it was much

easier for a German soldier on the

Western front to throw up his hands and

stop fighting than it was on the Eastern

Front.

In the Soviet Union, Stalin also took

the initiative. Operation Bagration

began on June 22nd, 1944.

On the third anniversary of the German

invasion of the Soviet Union, the Red

Army struck

back. Now that the Allies had finally

opened the long- awaited second front in

the west, Soviet troops launched a

devastating strike against the Vey.

The Soviet offensive against Army Group

Center in the summer of 1944 was

underrated for a long time. It was

overshadowed by the second front, the

Allied invasion of Normandy. But it was

actually the greatest military

catastrophe that the German Reich had to

endure. Within a few weeks, this Red

Army succeeded in crushing the entire

army group

center. The Germans were hopelessly

outnumbered. 2.5 million Soviet soldiers

against 1 million Germans. The line of

the front was very awkward for the

Germans. There was a huge front area

sticking out. The rear was partly or to

a large extent already in the hands of

the Soviet partisans. German

reconnaissance of the enemy drew

completely wrong conclusions and

believed that the main attack would take

place much further south. And finally,

Hitler was also against any sort of

mobile warfare.

The dictator had long since tied his

personal fate, as well as that of the

entire country, to the outcome of the

war and forbade any retreat. He didn't

have a convincing strategy.

There was always the hope that the Fura

was a genius, that the Fura would still

do something, that the Fur would pull

something out of his back pocket, some

miracle weapon, or that he still had

some reserves. You just had to hold out

long enough. That was actually the

propaganda

[Music]

[Music]

slogan. for men

and even

All of the state

[Music]

[Music]

Stalin also knew how to use propaganda

and presented himself as the savior of

the Soviet Empire. Two days before the

offensive, he had his submissive

comrades award him the medal for the

defense of Moscow. However, the dictator

left the planning of operation Bagration

to his

[Music]

generals. Stin like Hitler was a

military control freak, but he was well

doesn't really know because the files

haven't been released yet. He seems to

have held back more than his German

counterpart.

The Red Army had learned from its failed

offensives and attacked with a

significantly superior force on a front

that was 1,100 km long. The Soviets

managed to break through and advance up

to 600 km to the

west. Army Group Center was crushed. The

defeated troops now became part of a

perfidious propaganda show. On July

17th, 1944, Stalin paraded 55,000

defeated Vermach soldiers through

Moscow's

streets. Stalin very cleverly combined

this demonstration with a message to the

people. The Viamat is not invincible.

The Viamat consists to a large extent of

old men. The time of the young worldly

warriors was over. It was important for

him to show his citizens what the people

who had invaded their country looked

like. And of course, it was a deliberate

act of humiliation, which was of course

forbidden under the laws of war.

According to the Geneva Convention,

prisoners of war may not be lined up or

paraded. They were given castor oil

beforehand so they couldn't contain

themselves. And after the soldiers had

marched through, Moscow's street

cleaning vehicles cleaned up after them.

That was a cynical and nasty spectacle.

They wanted to show the master race were

just poor bes. And that worked quite

well. You saw fat generals who

corresponded exactly to this image of

the fat over fat general. And you saw

emaciated soldiers who were often much

older, the last troops that Hitler had

left marching through the

streets. It didn't trigger the effect on

the people that it was supposed to. The

police didn't have to keep the citizens

of Moscow from attacking the Viamat

soldiers. Instead, they simply stood

silently at the side of the road. They

actually felt sorry for these soldiers

because they saw in them their own

soldiers. Nevertheless, it was important

to Stalin and his people to demonstrate

precisely that they had come as the

master race and now they showed the

people this is what they look like.

3 days earlier, Adolf Hitler had

traveled to his headquarters in

Rastenborg, East Prussia. Many of the

buildings in the complex had been

covered with bunkers to protect them

from air attacks, but the Nazi

leadership was not prepared for an

attack from

[Music]

within. On July 20th, 1944, a bomb

exploded during a meeting with the

Furer. It had been smuggled into the

barracks by Klaus Shank graph

vonbeck. He had gathered a circle of

conspirators around him. They were

convinced that Hitler had to die in

order to save Germany from ruin. On the

one hand, he recognized the criminal

character of this war and that this war

was lost and that more and more people

would die. There could no longer be a

victory and therefore it had to be

stopped. The problem for Stalenburg was

how to get to Hitler. He was just a

small fry in the high command of the

army in the Bendlo. He couldn't just

walk into the Fura's headquarters and

say, "I would like an appointment with

the Fura and give him an explosive." The

problem was that very few conspirators

had access. But he finally got access

when he became the chief of staff of the

Army Reserve on July the 1st, 1944. That

gave him the right to attend briefings

and that then put him in a dual role

being the head of the coup and also the

one to plant the

bomb. The destroyed barracks meeting

room bears witness to the force of the

explosion. But Adolf Hitler survived the

assassination attempt and later that

same afternoon just 3 hours after the

attack welcomed Benito Mussolini at

Wolf's train station. Together they

visited the destroyed barracks. That

night in a mobile radio van he had

brought in specially for the purpose

Hitler delivered a radio address. He

presented himself in his tried and

tested manner as the leader chosen by

fate.

begin. Then the machinery of the third R

began to unear this conspiracy and there

are hundreds of people 800 900 who are

also executed and anyone who had a

connection with the 20th of July then

died.

Most are subjected to a show trial

before the people's court. This film

footage shot on Hitler's orders was

never shown. Even Nazi propaganda found

the grading roar of presiding judge

Roland Fryler unsuitable for publicity.

[Music]

Many of the conspirators retained their

dignity, although the verdicts were a

foregone conclusion. Death by hanging.

They were executed in pliten prison with

wire nooes hung on meat hooks and filmed

for Hitler. The terror of Nazi rule

reached one of its cruel climaxes.

The assassination was actually a

decisive moment because afterwards the

Nazi system had a much tighter grip on

society. After July of 1944, all checks

to the system had

gone and now there was no buffer at all

between

them. Anyone who stuck their head up now

lost it. And now the system could really

take action and had such a tight grip on

German society that they were able to

divide the society and dra it down with

them. In the course of their offensive,

Soviet troops reached Lublin on July

24th. Here they stumbled upon the

remains of a monstrous crime. As the Red

Army advanced toward Lublin, Soviet

soldiers also liberated the Maidan death

camp. And Maidan was actually the first

real death camp that the allies

liberated.

In view of the rapid advance of the Red

Army, SS troops had hastily tried to

cover up their misdeeds just a day

before and ordered the camp to be

closed. However, they weren't able to

destroy the gas chambers. As early as

August, the first journalists visited

Maidanek and published photos and

reports. Tens of thousands were murdered

in this

camp. Here, for the first time, the full

extent of the genocide made possible by

this criminal war was revealed.

[Music]

Maidan was by no means the largest and

most important extermination camp but

for the first time the allies had an

idea of what had transpired and they had

issued a communi. It was then translated

into five

languages and the effect cannot be

imagined strongly enough because of

course all war propaganda tends to be

exaggerated. But the allies were

suddenly confronted with a reality that

actually completely confirmed these

exaggerations and that of course was a

completely different dimension. And then

there was also the practical attempt to

preserve it as a place of remembrance

even during the war. And in the months

that followed things continued and I

think it was Thomas Man who wrote this

secret is about to be revealed and the

disgrace of Germany will lie before the

eyes of the world.

While the war was still in full swing, a

memorial service for the victims of the

death camp was held on August 6th and

was reported worldwide.

I think the liberation of the

concentration camps had a very decisive

impact on how the Germans were viewed.

For the Americans, the war was a

conventional war against another

military power fought more or less

according to the rules of the Geneva

Conventions.

Eisenhower couldn't have imagined what

was happening in those camps and the

first camp Eisenhower saw shocked him in

such a way that after that the vehemat

was no longer a subject worthy of

discussion for

him. He also refused to receive any

German general. After they had seen that

they had a completely different view of

the VMA because they saw they defended

it. They had camps like that in the

hinterlands and they knew it and they

defended this

regime. The victors forced the German

soldiers to see the horror with their

own eyes, even if not all of them were

direct perpetrators. Blind obedience

often led to inconceivable crimes. And

yet no one made another attempt like the

conspirators on July 20th to overthrow

the criminal regime in order to end the

Nazi

[Music]

terror. On the Western Front, Allied

troops struggled for weeks to break out

of the Normandy beach head. They wanted

to advance toward the Sain as soon as

possible.

[Music]

The Germans put up stubborn resistance.

For weeks, they engaged in heavy

fighting with the Allies. By the end of

July, the Vermacht had suffered almost

115,000 dead and wounded, plus more than

40,000 were made prisoners. Supplies

also failed to arrive. Finally, the

German front line collapsed.

[Music]

It took eight weeks for the Allies to

finally break through. That's because

the Allies using their artillery and air

power inflicted heavy losses on the

Germans until the Germans simply didn't

have the ability to reinforce their

front lines. And so the breakthrough

occurred on July

25th. US troops reached the suburbs of

Paris where the liberators were greeted

enthusiastically. The fight for France's

freedom seemed to be over. The allies

had landed in Provence as

[Music]

well, but Hitler, enraged, ordered his

generals to raise the French capital to

the ground before they retreated.

Hitler's idea was that Paris had to burn

and that his general there, General

Kitz, should destroy Paris.

General von Cortitz was told by the

American general, I think it may have

been Eisenhower, that if you destroy the

city of Paris, you will be held

responsible after the war.

The warning was that he would be treated

as a war criminal if he dared to carry

out the destruction order. In fact, on

the day of the liberation of Paris,

there were still sporadic exchanges of

fire between US troops and German

soldiers. It's possible that those were

only mock battles with which Coltitz

wanted to cover up his refusal to obey

Hitler's orders.

Colitz was maneuvering. He was in charge

and he maneuvered back and forth until

he actually no longer had the means. He

used his leeway in such a way that at

some point he no longer had the means or

let the necessary explosives to reduce

Paris to

rubble. On the afternoon of July 25th,

Coltitz officially handed the city over

to French forces under the command of

Major General L. Clerk.

Anan was the cry those days. At last, we

can breathe a sigh of relief. All of

Paris was in the streets. The Germans

had been defeated.

The summer of 1944 meant three heavy

defeats for the Germans. First, in the

west, occupied France was lost. In the

east, army group center was crushed and

in the south, Rome was lost and the

Germans had to retreat to northern

Italy. Nevertheless, that didn't mean

that the war was over. There were

several reasons for that. One of them

was that the Germans were not thrown

back on their borders and that created a

special motivation for many soldiers.

Now they were fighting for their

homeland, for their own farm, for their

own

house. For these soldiers, the war was

over. Many were relieved to have finally

escaped the hopeless struggle. But many

were also driven by fear. Soon, the

Allies would be at the borders of the

Third Reich. They would not be able to

save their country from the ravages of

impending doom.

[Music]

Not

enough

[Applause]

[Music]

territori may

We shall fight on the beaches. We shall

fight on the landing grounds. We shall

fight in the fields and in the streets.

We shall fight in the hills. We shall

never surrender.

[Music]

Union

[Music]

for the United States of America was

suddenly and deliberately attacked by

naval and air forces of the Empire of

Japan. We will gain the inevitable

triumph. So help us God.

holiday.

[Music]

[Applause]

The Nazis entered this war under the

rather childish delusion that they were

going to bomb everybody else and nobody

was going to bomb them.

sing.

[Music]

In the summer of 1944, the United States

Pacific Fleet was headed for the Marana

Islands. US forces reached Saipan on

June 15th after a hard-fought amphibious

landing on the tropical beaches. The

Marines advanced inland, waging

protracted battles kilometer after

kilometer because the defenders had

fortified the island extremely well.

In 1944, Pacific islands like the

Mariana Islands were bitterly contested

and fiercely fought over because

Japanese officers were ordered to halt

the Mariana Islands to the last man and

to the last

bullet because it was quite clear to the

Japanese military leadership that from

the Mariana American bombers would be

able to reach the Japanese mother

islands and would be able to bomb Tokyo

as

well. During the war against Japan, US

forces combined two thrusts. One was via

New Guinea and the Philippines, the

other via the Central Pacific.

The decisive thrust of the war was in

the central Pacific because the central

Pacific divides the Japanese sphere of

power into a northern and southern half

and because from the central Pacific

from the Maranas, American B29s could

bomb

Japan. The images of the bloody

amphibious landings were similar to

those taken a few days earlier in

Europe. The Normandy invasion began on

June 6th, 1944 on the beaches of France.

Here, as there, the Allies threw

incredible quantities of men and

material into battle. But that's where

the parallels between the two theaters

of war ended.

It was really a global war which also

had very different reasons, a different

course but each with its own logic. The

Pacific war was not just an offshoot of

Europe. It had its own value, a war of

its own logic. And then there was this

parallelism. It was quite remarkable

what was achieved

logistically. Van

12,000 defenders had entrenched

themselves on Saipan after the Japanese

fleet was crushed in the Battle of the

Philippine Sea. They were cut off from

all supplies. The Japanese soldiers were

hiding in the jungle and in extensive

cave

systems propaganda. Japanese war

propaganda quite strongly fueled the

will on the part of Japanese soldiers to

really fight to the death to hold on to

these small and seemingly insignificant

islands.

The Japanese demanded the utmost from

their opponents in accordance with the

Bushidto code. They didn't give an inch

to force the defenders out of their cave

systems. The American soldiers perfected

their flamethrower

tactics. They attacked the caves in

groups supported by artillery and

machine guns. Japanese who rushed out of

their caves on fire were gunned down by

the GIS. The slaughter lasted 3

weeks. Japanese soldiers rarely

surrendered. Instead, they preferred to

throw themselves to their deaths. The

Marines prisoners were almost

exclusively Korean forced

laborers and then they entered an area

with the Japanese civilian population

for the first time. Before that you were

only in the outposts in Saipan. The

Japanese had massive casualties. They

performed these banzai attacks where

they were being mowed down by the

hundreds and thousands. And it was

compounded by the fact that whether

voluntarily or force, probably more by

force, the Japanese civilian population

was also jumping off cliffs to their

deaths. This led the Americans to

wonder, what if even the Japanese

civilian population wouldn't surrender?

How was the war going to end? We were to

have them kill every Japanese person one

by one and we might be able to do that.

But that also meant there could be

enormous casualties on our side.

By the end of the Battle of Saipan, some

26,000 Japanese army soldiers and about

3,500 US Marines had lost their

lives. Meanwhile, in Moscow, Joseph

Stalin was making plans for the further

course of his offensive against the

Third Reich. The Red Army had been

advancing successfully since June 22nd,

1944, which was the 3rd anniversary of

the German invasion of the Soviet

Union. Within 5 weeks, they had advanced

as far as Poland. As Soviet troops

approached Warsaw, Stalin seized the

opportunity to extend his claim to rule

Poland.

While the Red Army advanced to the

Vistula, the Polish underground

resistance finally tried to strike

against the Germans. The Polish home

army had set itself the goal of

liberating the country and saw the time

had come to act.

The Poles were, of course, massively

anti-German, anti-Nazi, but probably

antis-siet to a similar degree.

The question now was it's of no use to

us if we get rid of German rule and then

come under Soviet rule. And that's why

they thought if we liberate Warsaw,

liberate our capital on our own before

the Soviets arrive, that would give us

political weight in shaping postwar

Poland. six points.

On August 1st, 1944, the Polish home

army, the Arma Cryova, dared to revolt

in Warsaw. 45,000 men were ready, but

many of them were inadequately armed or

not armed at all. The insurgents

completely lacked any sort of heavy

weaponry. The German Vermacht brutally

put down the uprising. As always, the

Germans reacted extremely quickly in

such situations. They brought in troops

from everywhere and fought that uprising

with the most brutal force. And the Amy

Cryova couldn't do anything but try to

go down heroically and fight against the

Germans. And it was clear relatively

quickly by the first days of August that

they didn't stand a chance against these

Germans who were bringing in troops on a

massive scale.

[Music]

an inferno broke out over

[Music]

Warsaw. The Germans were using this to

actually wipe out this Warsaw. That's

why they were fighting not only

militarily against the Polish home army,

but especially in those first days of

August. The concept was to put down this

uprising with brutal force in order to

punish the Polish civilian population.

At the same time, so there were hundreds

of thousands of dead in that struggle.

It was a zenith of violence, a zenith of

terror that Poland was experiencing

there from the Germans.

Stalin did nothing to save Warsaw. He

planned to secure his power in Poland by

means of a puppet government.

Stalin ordered the Red Army to wait

until the Germans had finished the job.

It was clear to him that after the war

there would be no independent

nationalist Poland because he knew that

the Polish nationalists were the worst

enemies of the Bolsheiks. And he didn't

want to see anyone from this force in

the Polish government. And therefore he

quite cynically let the Germans do the

bloody work which he then didn't have to

do. And the Red Army only marched into

Warsaw when that fight was over.

SS Chief Himmler ordered all inhabitants

of Warsaw to be killed and the city

raised to the ground. The slaughter

lasted 63 days. No one knows the exact

number of victims. Among Polish

civilians alone, the figures vary

between 150 and

225,000 dead. The West played along with

Stalin's game. In October of 1944,

Winston Churchill traveled to Moscow.

Together with Stalin, the British prime

minister drafted a plan for the division

of Eastern Europe after the war.

Famously infamous was the so-called note

on which was noted in handwriting into

which spheres of influence the eastern

territories of Europe should follow. The

Baltic states and Poland were to be

completely under the influence of the

Soviet Union. Romania to a large extent

to the Soviet Union. Bulgaria, likewise,

Yugoslavia, 50% to the Soviet Union, and

50% under Western influence. It is

rumored that Churchill wrote the note,

and Stalin checked off each point noted

on it. The note has generally been

regarded as a rather cynical expression

of great power behavior that decided the

postwar fate over the heads of millions

of

people. On their retreat, the Vermach

left behind scorched earth. The order,

which officially read, "Loosening,

clearing, paralysis, and destruction

resulted in the Germans devastating

entire areas. Supplies were destroyed,

machinery destroyed, towns and villages

burned down, people deported, the

marauding soldiers soon became almost

unstoppable.

What actually happened then was

basically an unprecedented program of

destruction. Everything of value was

destroyed. There was, just to give you

one example, this infamous rail wolf

that ripped up all the rail ties. Dams

were being blown up. There was a really

huge plane that lots of times the only

thing left standing were chimneys.

Villages of chimneys made of bricks. And

those chimneys were still sticking up in

the air and everything else was just

flattened.

While the Vermacht was devastating

entire regions in the east, the Germans

on the home front hoped for the promised

miracle weapons to bring the wartime

enemy in the British Isles to their

knees. In the propaganda jargon of the

Third Reich, the rockets developed by

Vayner Fon Brown were called V2s. V

stood for

retaliation. Tests failed time and

again. Now the V2 together with the V1

cruise missile was supposed to turn the

tide and at Adolf Hitler's behest wipe

out cities in Great Britain.

Technically the V2 was actually a very

modern device which initiated the

development of the moon rocket. But it

was wonderful for the allies that the

Germans built it because it was so

infinitely expensive and so infinitely

complex.

If the Germans had built conventional

weapons, airplanes, tanks, they could

have done much more damage with it. The

effect militarily was almost zero. They

killed a few thousand civilians, but

that was

it. On September 8th, 1944, the first

launch was successful. By the end of the

war, 1,400 V2 rockets had been fired,

mainly from mobile launch pads in

Holland. The V2 was so fast that British

anti-aircraft systems failed. Without

warning, the rockets hit residential

neighborhoods whose residents couldn't

get to safety in time. In London,

thousands died. Another prestige object

of the Nazis was the newly developed

Me262 jet fighter, which was produced at

enormous cost in terms of material. The

aircraft, which could reach speeds of up

to 900 km per hour, was intended to put

an end to Allied air supremacy. However,

the first jets weren't ready for

operation until November of 1944. Due to

the lack of fuel, the fighters could

only rarely take off. In the end, the

ME262 was unable to break the

superiority of the enemy air force. The

Masashes 262 was a revolutionary

aircraft, clearly ahead of its time. But

no airplane decides a war. When we

examine air warfare, we find time and

again that technology is not actually

decisive. That depends on tactics and

above all on numbers. And of course, the

maximum 200 jet fighters would not have

any significant effect at all. On the

contrary, they shot down some bombers

but lost just as many of their own

fighters. So that fizzled out and was

mainly a means of propaganda.

The Germans had tactical weapons, so

they were almost always superior to

their opponents. The Germans undoubtedly

had the best tanks and according to

Allied statements, the Germans had

excellent infantry weapons, the MG42,

the assault rifle 44, the Germans really

made superior tactical weapons. But the

strategic weapons, strategic bombers or

something like that, in all these

things, the Germans were inferior

because they neglected that.

The battle for the Japanese occupied

Philippines had been raging in the Gulf

of Lee since October of 1944. Island by

island, US troops had pushed Japan's

soldiers back across the Pacific, the

largest naval battle in history ended in

favor of the Americans. Ever since he

retreated from the Japanese with his

troops in December of 1941, US General

Douglas MacArthur had declared that the

recapture of the Philippines was a

personal

matter. Douglas

MacArthur Douglas MacArthur was a man

who came from a very traditional

military family and for family reasons

he also felt very connected to the

Philippines. His father, for example,

had also already served in the

Philippines. His failure to hold and

defend the Philippines was a very great

shock for him. He made a promise when he

left the Philippines, and he wanted to

keep that promise. At the time, he said,

"I'll be back." Very much like the

Terminator, I'll be back. That's what it

was all about for him. And for him,

though, reconquest of the Philippines

was above all symbolic, a personal

symbolic value.

[Music]

During the battle of Lee, Japanese

squads known as kamicazi planes were

used for the first time.

[Music]

[Music]

Japanese pilots deliberately flew their

aircraft into American

[Music]

warships. While the phenomenon did not

decisively weaken US forces during those

war years, it exposed soldiers and

sailors to extraordinary nervous strain.

On the western border of the Third

Reich, the so-called West Wall was

unable to stop the Allied forces. The

troops goal was the

[Music]

Rine. During their advance, however, the

US soldiers encountered unexpectedly

strong resistance in the forests near

Aken. They engaged in fierce battles

with German Vermach units, supplies

which had to be brought in from southern

France and Normandy also came to a

standstill. They could take some German

villages, but there they were stuck

because they ran out of gas. That's

where the priorities were misplaced and

the Germans could reorganize themselves.

But the Germans were not as well

prepared as the news reel would have you

believe.

Although the war was clearly lost by the

summer of 1944 at the latest, the Viamat

continued to fight. They didn't want to

endure another 1918, no defeat, where it

could be said that we surrender too

soon.

What the soldiers had in mind this time

was that it was better to surrender 5

minutes after 12 than 5 minutes before

12. All of this, of course, with

horrendous losses, which far exceeded

anything we had seen

before. 4 days later, they closed the

ring around the

city. Hitler demanded that the imperial

city was to be defended to the last drop

of blood. About 3,000 men followed his

orders. Among them, numerous SSmen and

volunteers from the Hitler youth. They

initiated a house-to-house battle with

heavy losses. On October 21st, the

German commander finally surrendered

officially. Anyone who wanted to

surrender before then, despite the

hopeless situation, had to expect to be

fanatically persecuted.

Anyone who hung a white cloth out of the

window and wanted to surrender. Aken was

one of the first cities to be liberated

was then considered a defeist or could

be

murdered. The SS also now turned on its

own

population. The desertion of soldiers

was pursued more intensely than before.

So order collapsed on the one hand in

the Reich and violence struck back at

the Germans from the outside. But the

Nazis, so to speak, beat their fellow

Germans to persevere.

yet.

[Music]

Even without words, it becomes clear

that Germans still saw an encounter with

Adolf Hitler as an honor and the newsre

was supposed to motivate them to

persevere with such grotesque propaganda

[Music]

campaigns. In Berlin, Joseph Gerbles

mobilized the remnants of the German

population for a march to destruction.

The staging of the so-called folkm was

intended to demonstrate the

invincibility of the Reich.

supervis.

Horizon

[Music]

London and a man.

The fog storm was the very last

contingent and everyone at least that

was the idea. All 16 to 60 year olds

were mobilized mostly equipped with

looted weapons or not at all. But as the

war progressed however these folk storm

battalions were increasingly deployed to

the front line and that deployment was

of course completely pointless.

The war in the air also took on new

dimensions. No longer were only large

cities bombed, but medium-sized cities

with industrial sites as well. To defend

themselves, the Germans were forced to

withdraw their air forces from other

fronts. Although militarily effective,

the usefulness of the devastating air

war is still being disputed to this day.

In my opinion, it shortened the war

considerably because the Germans were

forced to invest the majority of their

armament resources into the air war to

protect

the they actually hoped to achieve two

goals with the bombings, namely to break

the morale of the general population,

but that didn't succeed and to paralyze

arms production, which basically

succeeded only very late. And as we know

not as much through the direct

destruction of the production facilities

but the more effective thing was the

destruction of the logistic system that

is the infrastructure the railroad

facilities that's what brought

production to a

standstill a destroyed production hall

of Daimler Works. During the war the

company had mostly built trucks and

aircraft engines. However, as before,

not only industrial sites, but also

civilian targets were bombed, which by

the fall of 1944 seemed at least

questionable from a moral point of view.

One could argue that the war was

actually decided in September of 44. It

was just a matter of time. Yes, that's

right. But the war had yet to be won.

And the British and Americans weren't on

the Rine yet. And they had a lot of

respect for the Rine and a lot of

respect for the Germans. And the

question was, of course, we're going to

win the war, but at what price? And when

will this shitty war finally be over

because there was war fatigue. And to

end the war, we had to hit it hard.

The British in particular bombed

civilian targets in the Reich. Bombs

were loaded on bases in England almost

daily. These included 4,000 lb

blockbusters that would detonate while

still in the air, covering as many house

roofs as possible and paving the way for

incendurary

bonds. Because the British still had the

idea that if they kept burning down the

inner cities, then the Germans would

somehow give up and the British further

wars, further advances, further fighting

on land. And that then led to the fact

that the British were particularly

successful in destroying cities. And

those incendury attacks that they flew

also took a particularly large number of

human lives. It was certainly the most

radical form of warfare against the

German civilian population.

About 600,000 German civilians fell

victim to the Allied bombing war. In

light of such numbers, it was difficult

to understand why the Germans continue

to support the criminal Nazi regime.

[Music]

Towards the end, fear really prevailed

more and more. As you hear from personal

testimonies, we had to win the war

because with what we had done, if we

lose, we don't even want to imagine what

they will do to us. that created a great

will to persevere even after the

sometimes terrible bombardments by the

allies which were aimed at breaking the

will of the population to persevere.

That simply didn't happen because this

total dictatorship of national socialism

still worked so well in capturing large

parts of the population that the

distribution of goods of services still

reached the people.

The Nazi regime not only had to ensure

the survival of the population, but it

also had to maintain the production of

armaments which was necessary for the

war. In order to escape the increasingly

precise attacks by the British and

Americans, production facilities were

moved underground throughout the Reich.

One response to the air war was to say,

"We're now moving what we consider to be

the most important and central

production areas to bomb-proof

underground production

facilities. The factories were put in

mines, tunnels, and underground

galleries.

New tunnels were also built for some of

the underground production facilities.

The news reel does not reveal that

mostly forced laborers and concentration

camp inmates were used for the

construction and operation of these

facilities in order to carry out the

dangerous work.

That was a big program that was set up

there which again entailed a change in

the character of forced labor because

concentration camp inmates were

systematically used in those underground

relocation projects and that was where

the most deadly working conditions for

forced laborers prevailed.

When US troops reached the MLV

manufacturing plant in the Harts

Mountains in April of 1945, they found

the remains of one of these terrible

factories. Prisoners from the Mitt Baora

concentration camp had to build the

engines for the V2 here. The labor camp

only operated for 18 months, but the

inhumane conditions cost the lives of

20,000 people. All the GIs found were a

few completely exhausted prisoners.

there. Above all, Jewish concentration

camp prisoners or concentration camp

prisoners in general were used because

it was very dangerous. The work was very

dangerous, but it was also detrimental

to their health and it was the kind of

work that was expected from those in

whose survival they had no interest in

anyway and where the term extermination

through labor absolutely summed up the

situation.

Hundreds of thousands of prisoners were

forced to slave away on large

construction sites and in factories

throughout the Reich. The prisoners were

kept alive only as long as they were

able to work. Those who became weak and

sick were left to their fate or sent to

the gas chamber.

The minister of armaments who was

responsible for using the now 7 million

forced laborers was

Albert. He would visit the deployment

area of the latest Vermach offensive. He

wanted to follow the battle personally.

Adolf Hitler planned to overrun the

allies in the Ardens. All reserves still

available were mobilized for this

purpose.

The decision was to be made in the hilly

forests of the Arden. The Nazi

leadership concentrated hundreds of

thousands of Vermach soldiers in the

border area between the German Reich,

Belgium, and France.

The Aden offensive was Hitler's attempt

to turn the war once again, to give it a

military twist. He really believed the

western allies were at the weakest point

in this opposing alliance. And if you

beat them, so to speak, as you did in

1940, then possibly the whole Western

front would collapse. The Western Allies

would withdraw and then only the Soviet

Union would be left and then, so to

speak, the German war machine could

focus its full power once again on the

Eastern front.

concentr forces had been trying to

advance toward the rine for weeks. In

the Hutkan forest between Aken and

Duran, they had unexpectedly suffered

heavy

[Music]

losses. On December 16th, 1944, the VeyK

offensive, Operation Autumn Fog, began.

At 5 in the morning, the German

artillery opened fire. 20 divisions were

ready to attack.

The Allies were taken completely by

surprise by the German offensive. They

hadn't expected the Germans to be able

to pull together so many tanks and

troops. But unlike in 1940, now there

were allied troops in the Aden. In 1940,

no one was there and they just marched

through. Now there were troops there and

they were fighting too. If we do not

succeed, Adolf Hitler declared at a

briefing, I don't see any chance of a

favorable outcome to this war, but we

will get through. The deluded dictator

still failed to recognize the sheer

superiority of his opponents. But for

the US troops, the offensive was much

harder to repel than expected. In the

battle that is now known in US military

history as the Battle of the Bulge, the

Germans inflicted heavy casualties on

them.

For the Americans, the Battle of the

Bulge was a very significant experience

because American troops for the first

time actually experienced what land

warfare had meant in Europe during the

previous wars.

wars under terrible weather conditions

and wars in difficult terrain. And of

course, these are all the reasons that

contributed to this myth. It was also

the bloodiest land battle fought by the

US Army during World War II. About

19,000 soldiers were killed during that

period.

At first, the Germans had the element of

surprise on their side. Entire units

with thousands of soldiers fell into

their hands as the newsre reported

triumphantly.

[Music]

of the and writer.

With racist condescension, Nazi

propaganda tried to cover up the

hopelessness of the Vermach's military

situation. The plan to crush the Allies

no longer had much to do with reality.

[Music]

The idea that this plan was based on was

that you had to get your fuel from the

American depots. And that was of course

a plan that was based on so many

intangibles that the German divisions,

there were a lot of SS divisions

involved. So it was really again what

the Reich was somehow able to scrape

together including weapons. The Germans

then managed to advance about 100 km

into Belgian territory.

kilome.

The element of surprise fizzled out very

quickly. You also couldn't use an

initial shock to advance quickly enough

to create reality. And in certain parts

of the front, the attack failed

completely. It all went completely

wrong, especially with the Vaffan SS.

And then there's also the fact that

anyone who had ever been to the Aden

could see for himself that it wasn't the

ideal area for a 60tonon tank. The army

that marched through there in 1940

marched through with light tanks, with

light trucks. And now the army of 1944

was marching through there, which was

equipped completely differently and

which wasn't suitable for these mountain

roads.

The allies reacted quickly and were

therefore able to hold their key

positions. Reserves and supplies arrived

quickly. Even the bad weather couldn't

save the VeyK. Its units suffered

massive losses. After 2 weeks, the

Germans found themselves on the

defensive.

Then the Americans counteratt attacked

and by the end of January, basically

everything was back to the way it was at

the beginning. The German American front

was restored

during Christmas week 1944. The Allies

seized a military initiative again. In

the evacuated town of Eshba, American

GIS celebrated Christmas, the last one

of this war. In a few weeks, the German

offensive would

collapse. On the home front, the Germans

also celebrated the holidays which was

staged for the news reel in line with

propaganda. At the same time, their

fathers, brothers, and sons were facing

Soviet superiority in Hungary. On

December 25th, the ring around German

troops in Budapest

closed. The Red Army set out to conquer

Hungary's capital. Germany's former

allies were now to be liberated. As

early as the spring of 1944, the

alliance between Hungary and the Third

Reich had become fragile.

Hungary had been an ally of Nazi Germany

since

1941 when the military defeat of Nazi

Germany became apparent. Hungary

launched its first attempts to reorient

itself and established contact with the

Allies.

No. Hitler then immediately summoned the

Reich regent Miklo Horthy to Berlin for

a report. While the dictator was

pressuring him with one of his tantrums,

German troops marched into Hungary. When

Horthy returned, the country was

occupied. The Nazis began deporting the

Jewish population to Avitz.

Starting on March 19th, 1944, German

troops entered Hungary completely

unexpectedly and without a fight took

power there. Of course, the old

Hungarian government was still there.

The Hungarian regent Mikloshi was still

there. But he didn't really have that

much to say anymore. All the power was

in the hands of the German

representatives. There was a R ple

potentiary. That's what he called

himself. And there was also, of course,

a so-called special task force that was

set up specifically to deal with the

Jews.

The bad thing was, after all, that the

Germans already had a lot of experience

and murder. This special task force

under Aishman initially began to empty

the country and by the summer of 1944

they deported about 430,000 people to

Awitz. There it was 2/3 went immediately

to the gas chamber and one/3 remained.

They did forced labor and most of them

still died there. So it was a terrible

situation and of course it was one of

the last brutal highlights of the

Holocaust. It was also referred to as

the final

chapter. In January of 1945, the Red

Army under the command of Marshall Ivan

Konv advanced towards Brelau and Krakow

without encountering any significant

resistance.

In the face of imminent defeat, the

German occupiers began to cover up their

crimes with murderous thoroughess. This

was also the case at the Avitz Birkinau

camp

complex. Soviets.

As the Soviet army approached, the SS

cleared most of the camps and the

detainees went on so-called death

marches. Attempts were made to bring

them on foot to the Al in order to cover

their tracks.

However, most of the people who were

sent on these marches were no longer

physically able. So, the marches

basically meant death marches because a

large proportion of those who were sent

on those marches simply

perished. He Himmler was responsible for

the evacuation of the concentration

camps. The SS Reich Fura instructed his

troops to systematically destroy all

evidence of the regime's mass murders

before it fell into Allied hands.

There was this infamous Zonda Commando

105. They started digging all these mass

graves in 1943 and burning the dead. And

that's what they did in the middle of

the whole extermination program. That's

what they did in Awitz with a certain

amount of success. Files were destroyed.

The crerematoria were dismantled. The

gas chambers were blown up.

When the first units of the Red Army

reached the concentration camp on

January 27th, 1945, most of the barracks

were empty. The soldiers found only a

few prisoners left who could bear

witness to the horrors that took place

there.

I think there were 6 to 7,000 prisoners

that the Red Army found there completely

exhausted. Of course, they tried to help

those people immediately, but it's also

a well-known phenomenon among people who

have been starved very badly that they

actually die the moment they get

something to eat. And that's exactly

what happened there. And another 20% of

those people died in the following

weeks.

The liberated also spoke of the gas

chambers where up to 10,000 people were

murdered every

day. What was new about Avitz was the

dimension of the whole thing. That is it

is now assumed that about 1.3 million

people were killed there and that was

new and of course it had a corresponding

effect. Anyone who has been to Awitz

knows that much more has been preserved

than the perpetrators would have liked.

the glasses, the hair, the suitcases,

everything is still there. And that

actually left no doubt as to what

actually happened there.

Ashvitz Berkanau has become a symbol of

the worst mass crime in history.

The survivors describe the selections at

the ramp, the hunger, the torture, the

human experiments. In the face of this

kind of horror, mankind is still

searching for explanations today.

Talk of a relapse into barbarism is

nonsense. I believe the opposite is the

case. Modern states have many more

possibilities to move people away.

sophisticated transportation systems,

railroad cars that quickly be used to

move hundreds of thousands of

people, airplanes and bombs that

completely wipe out cities in a few

days. The technical possibilities of the

modern state are so great that if a

dictator makes use of them, he can

quickly implement very large killing

programs. Modernity has not only

increased the possibilities. It has

introduced the division of labor in

which everyone is a small in the

wheel and can say yes I signed some

files. I put together the trains but I

didn't do it myself. That has a

relieving effect. It's a process of

civilization that paradoxically made it

possible for this monstrous murder

program to be born.

Some children survived the horror. They

willingly showed the tattoos on their

arms that identified them as victims of

the national socialist racial

fanaticism. They too will describe the

unimaginable which at first many Germans

refuse to believe. But the genocide of 6

million Jews is a bitter truth.

[Music]

Don't fall on me against the rocket.

[Applause]

[Music]

We shall defend our island whatever they

cross. We shall fight on the beaches. We

shall fight on the landing grounds. We

shall fight in the fields and in the

streets. We shall fight in the hills. We

shall never surrender.

[Music]

[Music]

The United States of America was

suddenly and deliberately attacked by

naval and air forces of the Empire of

Japan. We will gain the inevitable

triumph. So help us God.

from the dirty

star as she turned to the home.

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]

The Nazis entered this war under the

rather childish delusion that they were

going to bomb everybody else and nobody

was going to bomb them.

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

Sing early 1945 in Corland on the Baltic

Sea.

For several months, Army Group North of

the Vermacht had been surrounded on the

peninsula by the Red Army. The immense

losses of men and material over the past

years of the war had shattered the

once-feared army of Nazi Germany.

Amateur photographs captured the sorry

state of the trapped units.

Nazi propaganda on the other hand still

clung to the myth of military strength.

The news reel shows the commissioning of

so-called folks in the homeland.

Folks, men, youths, and stragglers

formed the personnel of the newly formed

units. What was particularly perfidious,

even in a hopeless military situation,

the men swore an oath to the furer.

[Music]

My God is highly

high. Hallelujah.

[Laughter]

The idea was not to give up. And the

concept of self-sacrifice was a very

strong and important

one. That's why Hitler thought the war

navy was so great because they went down

with man and mouse. He thought that was

great. That was the way to do it.

On January 12th, 1945, the Red Army

launched a major offensive into East

Prussia. At 4:45, the sky suddenly

turned bright as day as up to 300 Soviet

guns per kilometer of front opened fire

on the German positions. Red Army

cameramen filmed apocalyptic scenes

behind the Vermach's defensive lines

along a broad front after it quickly

collapsed. In previous years, the

Vermacht had waged a campaign of

extermination in the Soviet Union

against the racially inferior

population. This was according to the

ideology of the national socialists. Now

the theater of war had shifted east to

the territory of the German Reich and

with the Red Army soldiers came fear of

revenge in many

places. People were simply afraid. They

were told that the subhumans of the Red

Army were coming. They also knew what

sort of atrocities had been committed

before in the Soviet

Union. So, it was a mixture of

prejudices and a real fear of Red Army

brutality. And people recognized what

crimes Nazi Germany had

committed. and they knew people would

want to take revenge.

In view of these prospects, many of the

approximately 2 and a half million

people who lived in East Prussia at the

time wanted to leave their homeland as

quickly as possible and flee to the

west. But there was a

problem. The Nazis forbade escape for a

long time.

They wanted the positions to be held and

thus to be able to counter the Red Army,

which contributed to the fact that the

escape then took place so

abruptly. People left at the last minute

with makeshift luggage and were often

wiped out in the course of the

war. Who was fleeing on these journeys?

mothers with children and old men. Which

meant, as always in war, it hit the

weakest who had to fend for themselves

and who were held responsible for the

failure of an entire nation, as well as

a lack of evacuation

plans. Because the land route to the

west was largely cut off by the Soviets,

many people fled across the frozen lake.

But further dangers lay in these coastal

waters. The provisional destination for

many was the Baltic Sea coast near

Gdansk. People hoped to continue their

escape from there by ship because the

ports in the region were still under

German control. Gotenhathan was one of

them. It was there on the 30th of

January

1945 that thousands of people boarded

the Vilhelm Gustloff. The ship had

previously enjoyed nationwide fame.

Adolf Hitler had personally traveled to

Hamburg in May of 1937 for its

launching.

For years, the ship had served as a

cruise ship for the Nazi

organization

dures relaxed on its decks during

cruises through the Mediterranean and

North Sea.

Now, the ship was supposed to help bring

refugees and soldiers to the west. It

was overloaded with thousands of people

on board when it set sail. Because of

the heavy weight, the captain selected a

course through deep water. This led the

ship far out into the Baltic Sea, where

the Soviet Navy also cruised. At around

900 p.m., the ship the Wilhel Gustlaf,

which was named after a leader of the

National Socialist Party who was

murdered in 1936, was discovered and

torpedoed by a Soviet submarine. It sank

in the icy waters. At least 9,300 people

died in the disaster.

It wasn't a war crime in legal terms

because the Gustaf was sailing dark in

hostile seas, was armed and there were

soldiers on board. So in a way,

according to the laws of war, it was

legal to attack the

Gustaf. Whether it was legitimate is

another question and everybody has to

answer that question for themselves.

On the other side of the world too, the

war raged on unabated. US naval units

were cruising off the Japanese island of

Ewima about 1,000 km south of Tokyo. In

midFebruary of 1945, battleships opened

fire on the island, which is only 21 km

in size, but was strategically

important. US bombers took off from the

Marana Islands and provided air support

for the operation.

Evoima,

the volcanic island of Evoima was an

important location because there were

airfields and because it was useful as

an emergency landing site for bombers.

So, it became a strategic asset. And

that's why Evoima came into focus.

Shortly before 9:00 in the morning, war

correspondents from the US government

office of war information filmed tens of

thousands of US Marines as they landed

on the island 3 days after the attack

began. This footage of the fierce

fighting around the so-called Sulfur

Island later formed the basis of the

documentary film To the Shores of Euima.

We run into trouble on Green Beach. From

their fortified positions on Mount

Sabbachi, the chaps look right down our

throats. In addition to the cameramen,

there were also photographers among the

war correspondents. A few days after the

start of the landing operation, one of

them captured US Marines raising the US

flag on the summit of the extinct

volcano, Mount Suribachi. Although it

was only a reenactment of a previous

raising of the stars and stripes, the

photo has gone down in history.

World War II was a war of images. Yes,

out of millions of photos, we have five

or six photos that we all

know. And the flag raising on Evo Gima,

the reenactment symbolized the victory

of the Americans in the Pacific. anik

Pacific.

But it would be several months before

American victory in the Pacific was

achieved. The fighting around Eoima

alone raged on for weeks after the

photograph was taken on the volcano's

summit. The Japanese defenders pursued

bloody tactics.

The commander was fully aware that he

wouldn't be able to defend the island.

The goal was to inflict as many

casualties on the Americans as possible.

so that the war would become unpopular

and that the war would then be stopped.

That didn't succeed, but nevertheless,

the number of dead was immense.

More than 6,800 Marines died before the

island was completely taken. Added to

this, there were nearly 20,000 wounded.

On the Japanese side, a large part of

the approximately 20,000 defenders lost

their lives. only 216 surrendered to the

enemy. Overall, the Americans were very

surprised by the Japanese willingness to

make sacrifices which were shown in the

operations of the defense of Evoima. No

one actually believed that the Japanese

would really fight so rigorously to the

last man. And that played a very big

part in the Americans changing their

mind because at some point they said,

"We're going to have to end the war

differently."

Japanese troops were not just vehemently

resisting the threat of defeat on

Euoima. Since October of 1944, their

commanders in the Pacific had been using

a new approach. Kamicazis pilots swooped

down on enemy warships in their planes,

risking their own deaths.

Vice Admiral Takajiro Onishi, commander

of the Japanese Naval Air Forces, had

developed the

idea. That was, of course, a complete

shock for the

Americans. They hadn't expected it. It

was a completely new form of warfare.

They hadn't expected that willingness to

make sacrifices.

The squadrons of pilots had names like

morning sun and mountain cherry blossom.

It was not difficult to recruit

fanatical new blood for these

missions. However, if you look at it in

terms of results, it wasn't very

efficient.

A lot of planes were shot down by US

defenses and even the ones that did get

through had little

effect. It was more of an element of

shock. Images like these contributed to

this. This footage from January 21st,

1945 documented the aftermath of a

kamicazi attack on the USS Ticonderoga

near the Formosa Strait. Although the

aircraft carrier was not sunk in the

attack, more than 100 men aboard the

ship were killed, further increasing the

toll of American troops in the Pacific.

Almost two weeks later, the big three of

the anti-Hitler coalition met at the

Soviet seaside resort of

Yaltta. For years, Great Britain, the

Soviet Union, and the United States had

been united against Nazi Germany. Now,

the war in Europe seemed to be decided

in their favor. Its end was just a

matter of time. British Prime Minister

Winston Churchill, Soviet dictator

Joseph Stalin, and US President Franklin

D. Roosevelt made plans for the future

and fleshed out the agreements of a

post-war order that they had agreed on

at the Thrron summit about a year

earlier.

The big three gathered at Yaltta and now

the issue of the westward shift of

Poland was decided and it was clear that

there would be occupation zones and

there was also discussions about what

would happen in the

Pacific. So far the Soviet Union had not

taken part in the fighting against

Japan. The US president, who was in poor

health, wanted to change this in order

to end the war in the Pacific quickly

and to avoid further heavy losses.

There Roosevelt approached Stalin and

negotiated with him and said, "We need

you in the Pacific." And he got a

promise from Stalin that the Red Army

would attack in Europe 3 months after

the end of the

war, which they did to the day.

In return, the Western Allies pledged to

further expand their support for the Red

Army by bombing the German Reich. 2 days

after the end of the summit, Dresdon

became the focus of their air force.

Around 800 British Lancaster bombers

took off on the 13th of February, 1945

to attack the then seventh largest city

in Germany, which had previously been

largely spared from air

strikes. In this situation, Churchill

said, "Give me something to show

Starling that we support the Soviets."

Soviet. The idea then became if we flew

air strikes to the rear of the Soviet

front and cause chaos there, that would

somehow help the Red

Army. The British planes reached Dresden

shortly before 10 in the evening. An

automatic camera shot footage from the

air of how the explosive and incendurary

bombs were dropped. The attack was not

about hitting exact targets. The city

was to be extensively destroyed. Within

15 minutes, 3/arters of the city center

was in flames.

The fact that Dresden was such a

devastating attack was also due to the

circumstances. Dresden had no

anti-aircraft defenses. The

anti-aircraft guns had been moved to the

eastern front and some of the night

fighters were not allowed to take off.

It was a clear night and the British

were able to come in relatively low. So

it was a textbook attack.

A few hours later on Valentine's Day

1945, American bombers attacked Dresden

again in daylight. A US newsre described

the event.

The veteran first division of the eighth

air force today carried its 200,000 ton

of bombs to help and alive. Now they hit

Dresden hardest of all. A total of four

waves of attacks hit the important

transport hub on the Elb.

The blitz here blasting away for the

Russians now 45 mi away links a

two-front drive from east and west on

Berlin.

The consequences of the Anglo-American

air strikes were devastating. It was

estimated that up to 25,000 people fell

victim to the bombs. I never believed,"

said an official at the Dresden Missing

Person Center, who described his

impressions, that death could approach

people in such different forms, burned,

charred, dismembered, apparently

sleeping peacefully, contorted in pain,

completely cramped, clothed, naked, and

as a pitiful heap of ashes, and above it

all, the acrid smoke and the unbearable

smell of decay. Images taken months

after the attacks gave an idea of the

scale of the

disaster. Meanwhile, on the western

front, the Vey was falling further into

a defensive mode. In the fall of the

previous year, the Allies had liberated

Aken, the first major German city. In

December of

1944, a surprising German offensive in

the Arden initially led to a slowdown of

the Anglo-American advance. Only after

the complete defeat of the German

counterattack in January

1945 could US forces fully concentrate

on the advance eastward again. They

encountered fierce resistance at Yulish.

A German newsreel

reports. from

Geto. The German defenders had blown up

the Rur Dam. As a result, the level of

the river at Ulik had also risen

noticeably. Only after the flood waters

had receded were US units able to cross

the rarer and move into the city center

on February

23rd. There the GIs were greeted with a

shocking picture. Ulik no longer

existed. For months the town had been

under fire. Countless artillery shells

and aerial bombs had landed on it. The

last remaining inhabitants of Ulik had

already been evacuated in December of

the previous year. What remained was a

field of ruins in which the German

defenders barricaded themselves and

engaged the Americans in a battle for

mountains of rubble that was as fierce

as it was

futile. In early March, the

commander-in-chief of the US forces in

Europe, Dwight D. Eisenhower, arrived in

the conquered city and visited Ulik

Citadel. For a long time, the structure

had been considered impregnable. No

enemy soldier had entered it since the

Napoleonic Wars. Eisenhower's propaganda

photographs from the Citadel were

intended to convey confidence and make

it clear that there was no doubt that

the entire German Reich would be

conquered just like the centuries old

fortress. Meanwhile, in the east, the

Red Army continued its advance unabated.

In addition to East Prussia in the

north, it also advanced further south in

Sisia towards what was then the

territory of the German Reich and

advanced rapidly. The region was of

great strategic importance because of

its numerous industrial plants. Our

tanks have crushed everything, wrote a

Red Army soldier in his diary on January

23rd. Their tracks flattened wagons,

horses, and everything else that was on

the road. The reasons for the success

lay in the Red Army's numerical

superiority in men and material and in

serious tactical errors on Hitler's

part. In November of

1943, Hitler focused his emphasis on the

West. In 1944, it went all

wrong. But he still had the feeling that

he had to fight the West allies who had

pushed back the Germans from their new

territories and that at a time when the

Red Army launched their greatest attack

on the Nitel

River. By doing soap,

he made himself Stalin's best alliance

partner. Alliance partner from Stalin.

In recent years, many Germans had fled

from the bombing raids of the Western

Allies to Sisia, which had long been

spared the air war. With the advance of

the Soviets, they now found themselves

in the middle of the war. Similar to

East Prussia, many people there had only

one goal, to flee from the Red Army.

The revenge will be

terrible because what we did in the

course of the Eastern campaign,

especially against Soviet civilians,

what crimes we committed that will come

back to us as revenge.

The fears often prove to be justified.

Many Red Army soldiers then actually

took revenge for the crimes that the Vey

and SS had previously been guilty of.

What we had there was an escalation of

violence against German

civilians through the shooting of

civilians and of women and

children, the abduction of German

civilians, and the mass

women, the sexual violence against

German Women can be explained in several

ways. First, it is said that a woman's

body is symbolic of the nation. Thus, a

desecration of the woman stands for a

desecration and dishonor of the enemy.

Nazi propaganda regularly picked up on

these desecrations and thus continued to

stir up fear and hatred among the

population. A news report from January

1945 from Sisia.

[Music]

and

[Music]

liberation. Deon

[Music]

Despite the militarily hopeless

situation, leading national socialists

continued to say that capitulation was a

no-go. Instead, they continued to cling

to strategically outdated concepts to

stop the Red Army.

The question for the Germans was, how

can we stop this avalanche of a Red

Army? And one concept that was developed

as early as 1944 on the Eastern front

was to introduce fixed sites that were

then later declared fortresses which

were located at traffic junctions and

that you defend at these points. And so

you had breakers on which the ways of

the Red Army attacked breaks.

One of these breakaters was to be

breastlau in lower Sisia which was

declared a fortress by Hitler.

On January 20th, Carl Hanka, the Gowiter

of Lower Silisia, ordered the civilian

population to leave the

However, due to a lack of organization

and fear of the dangers of fleeing,

200,000 people stayed in Brelau. The

militarily inexperienced population was

to defend the city together with units

of Fulchtorm, Vmach, and SS. Those who

refused were shot.

This led to absurd measures. They

created taxiways in the city. They tried

to defend the city in house-to-house

fighting, which drove up the death toll

among the civilian population to an

exorbitant

degree. While Breastlau was still under

siege, the Red Army advanced to the odor

on other sections of the front, some 370

km downstream, it had built bridge heads

on the west bank near Kustrin.

Nevertheless, the Nazi leadership

remained unimpressed. In the middle of

the month, Gobles wrote in his diary,

"As far as the East is concerned, the

furer is no longer too concerned. He has

the impression that we are slowly

regaining solid fronts." An

idiosyncratic reading of events which

was picked up by war correspondents. A

bizarre interview took place on the

odor. Even though it was never shown in

the cinemas, it illustrated the

absurdity of Nazi propaganda.

While the Red Army had conquered large

parts of Sisia and Pomerania in the

east, the Americans, British, and

Canadians had made rather slow progress

in the west. Their next major objective

was the rind. US forces had been

fighting their way towards Cologne since

the end of February.

So the Rine was now the big natural

border in the west. That's why the

fighting on the way to the Rine was

still relatively heavy with relatively

heavy losses. February 45 was one of the

most deadly months for the US Army.

On March 5th, American units reached the

suburbs of the Cathedral City. The third

US armored division moved in through the

districts of Boklemund and Vulgang. The

ordinary citizen of Cologne has nothing

to fear from Allied troops read leaflets

that have previously been dropped over

the city.

[Applause]

A day later, the GIs fought their way

into the city center and witnessed a

young woman who was apparently caught

between the lines in her vehicle on

Kristoff Strasa. Though seriously

injured, she could be

saved. A few hundred meters away, the

Americans encountered a last German

pocket of resistance near Domeflats. A

Panther tank blocked the way to the

Rine, but even it couldn't stop the

offensive for long. With one well- aimed

hit, it was taken out. Only three of the

fiveman crew could save themselves from

the burning wreck. The last significant

resistance had been

broken. Late in the afternoon on March

6th, peace returned. In the districts of

Cologne on the left bank of the Rine,

the Second World War was over.

The next day, the high command of the

Vmach reported succinctly, "The heap of

rubble that is Cologne has been left to

the enemy." The US military, on the

other hand, reported extensively from

the conquered city.

Cologne was one of the great German

cities, by far the largest city

conquered by the Allies up to that time.

Hamburg, Leipzik, Berlin, Munich were

still far away, so it made sense to

conquer Cologne. The Cologne Cathedral

was a landmark in the west of the right.

So you document this more widely than

the conquest of Visel.

As part of the special film project 186,

Army Air Force cameramen accompanied the

advancing US troops in Cologne. They

captured the immense extent of

destruction on 16mime color film. To

this day, their images provide a

depressing testimony of the city, almost

threearters of which had been destroyed.

US leadership placed great value on the

work of the cameramen.

Film had already played a big role in

World War II as documentation, but also

as propaganda. Camera technology was

portable and practical and eventually

also in color, shot in color by the

Americans. And they wanted to bring the

images home with them. They wanted to

document not just for the cinemas but

also for the military

internally. Before the defeat, the

defenders of Cologne had successfully

blown up the bridges over the Rine.

Thus, for the time being, the Allies

were denied a way across the

river. A day after capturing Cologne,

the Americans pulled off another coup

some 55 kilometers

upstream. A small advanced party of the

9inth US Armored Division reached

Ludenorf Bridge which spans the Rine

near Remagan. To their surprise, the

bridge had not been blown up and there

was also little or no resistance from

enemy troops. The Ray Folk the Rayan

Folk Storm didn't assemble. If the

Rayaran Folktor battalion had been

there, had fired a few more rounds, then

this small patrol, there weren't that

many American soldiers, wouldn't have

been able to reach the bridge head so

easily.

The bridge was successfully captured in

a surprise attack. The action was

reenacted for propaganda purposes a few

days later. Thus, during the next 24

hours, more than 8,000 US soldiers

reached the eastern bank of the Rine.

Very units tried to correct their

mistake and destroy the bridge by air

strikes and artillery fire. However, it

took 10 days for the bridge to actually

collapse. By then, US sappers had

erected a pontoon bridge and continued

to move units across the Rine on a large

scale. It was a severe blow to the

defense of the Reich, which was not

without consequences for those

responsible.

Hitler was absolutely

furious. And the Brit commander was

executed right

away. And all the others they could

find, they were tried and murdered. I'd

say

the furer no longer appeared in public.

On the 20th of March, he allowed himself

to be filmed one last time in the garden

of his Reich Chancellery.

Did Hitler realize that the war was

lost? And if so, when did he realize it?

One argument was that Hitler was not

stupid and knew how things were going.

This led to him withdrawing and showing

himself only when he could announce a

victory. Well, these announcements of

victory failed to materialize and he

became more and more depressed. Physical

decline set in because it was clear to

him how this was going to

end. Here the furer awarded Hitler youth

who had distinguished themselves

militarily. The fact that the war was

lost does not change the sense of duty

to continue fighting. The younger

generation in particular fell victim to

the inhuman fanaticism.

In this last phase of the war, the kits

were the last reserve of the Third

Reich very individually as cannon

foder. All of these

children were used as cannon foder for

the final battle. End camp.

[Music]

The boy with the bazookas was Wilhelm

Hubner. At the time he was the subject

of numerous news reel

reports.

for the lower SIN city of Laoan in

present-day Poland had already been

largely captured by the Red Army in

February of 1945. In early March,

however, it was recaptured by the Vey,

one of the extremely rare German success

stories of those days.

Propaganda Minister Joseph Gerbos

immediately traveled to the region and

shortly afterward gave a fanatical

speech in nearby Geritz. It was his last

appearance in a news reel.

to those of medieval unra.

[Applause]

Bon and

God would

[Music]

[Applause]

Gerbles in particular, if you will,

comes into his own with his speech in

the spring of 1945.

It is of course also a staging of the

downfall and the emphasis is that we

will not survive

it. That's it. Actually there's always

talk of the turning point and of

victory but the underlying motive is

actually it's Nazi ideology or nothing.

In January 1945, Gerbles called for a

people's sacrifice for

the As in the Napoleonic wars in the

previous century, the population had to

donate.

[Music]

[Music]

In the face of impending doom, the

regime desperately tried to compensate

for the losses, including with women.

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]

The brutal thing of course was the

distance of these bazookas which was a

maximum of 100 m usually 50 60 in order

to be really effective. Those who fired

them of course always paid with their

lives. Of course that was also the

cynical calculation of the

regime. A folktor man who then carried

it out who destroyed an enemy tank. It

was the choreography of

doom. The territory still under German

control was shrinking day by day.

According to the will of the Nazi

leadership, people had to now sacrifice

not only clothes and iron, but also

themselves.

This was an indication of the regime's

lack of inhibition and brute willingness

to die, which in the end was ready to

open all the floodgates, to discard any

form of responsibility, and to do

everything possible to continue this

war, no matter how futile it had become.

to the last bullet.

On March 19th,

1945, US B29 superfortresses were loaded

with bombs on Saipan, the main island of

the Maranas. The target of the long

range planes was the Japanese capital.

Mission commander, Major General Curtis

E. Lame, had previously made a major

decision. As part of operation meeting

house 2, Tokyo was to be attacked not

only with explosive bombs but also with

incendiary bombs. These were also to be

dropped over residential

areas. An armada of bombers took off

from three island airfields on the

afternoon of March 9th. Each of the more

than 300 planes was loaded with 40

cluster bombs, each containing

1,500 napom bombs. The GIS called them

Tokyo calling

cards. Original footage of the

large-scale night attack is not

available. Scenes shot later showed the

Superfortresses dropping their deadly

load. More than 1,600 tons of bombs were

dropped from a low altitude over the

urban area.

Japanese houses were mostly made of wood

and paper and immediately burst into

flames. Strong westerly winds ignited a

firestorm. Up to 100,000 people were

reported to have died in the operation.

Over 40 km of the city was destroyed.

The attack is still considered the

heaviest conventional air strike in

history.

The intent was to convey the message to

the Japanese opponents of the war that

Japanese war propaganda had very

strongly stirred up the will on the part

of the Japanese soldiers to really go to

their deaths.

[Music]

The fanaticism with which the Japanese

military fought was once again evident

on Okinawa. The largest island in the

Ryuku chain is located about 500 km off

the southern main island of Nippon. The

US military had assembled 180,000 troops

for an invasion of Okinawa. When the

enterprise launched on Easter Sunday

1945, the GIS initially encountered

little resistance. The defenders had

retreated into the hinterland where they

put up fierce resistance.

When you think about the battle of

Okinawa, a lot of civilians there were

holed up in caves and Japanese Americans

were deployed here to deliver the

message in Japanese. Come out of the

caves. Surrender. It doesn't make sense

for you to kill yourselves or to wait to

die by flamethrowers or by hand

grenades.

But not everyone was willing to give up.

For example, teachers would throw

themselves and their students to their

deaths from cliffs on the island to

escape life under US occupation. It

would take months before Okinawa could

be brought completely under American

control. On April 12th,

1945, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt

died at the age of 63. In a funeral

procession through the streets of

Washington, Americans bid farewell to

their head of state. Vice President

Harry S. Truman became his successor. In

Berlin, the news caused a furer. Here

you have the miracle I always predicted.

Hitler is said to have shouted when he

heard of Roosevelt's death. Now, who's

right? The war is not lost.

[Music]

Thank all people.

[Applause]

[Music]

We should defend our island whatever

they cross may. We will fight on the

beaches. We shall fight on the landing

grounds. We shall fight in the fields

and in the streets. We shall fight in

the hills. We shall never surrender.

[Music]

in a

warship. The United States of America

was suddenly and deliberately attacked

by naval and air forces of the Empire of

Japan. We will gain the inevitable

triumph. So help us God.

[Applause]

[Music]

as she turned to the

[Applause]

home. The Nazis entered this war under

the rather childish delusion that they

were going to bomb everybody else and

nobody was going to bomb them.

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

single. April 1945 on the Odor River. A

good 60 kilometers northeast of Berlin

in what was then Nidorven, a Vermacht

infantry battalion was engaged in combat

with units of the advancing Red Army.

This footage was among the last scenes

shot by German propaganda units in that

war. Despite the Third Reich's hopeless

military situation, shots of good

humored German soldiers and fallen Red

Army soldiers was supposed to spread

optimism. According to Nazi logic,

surrender was not an option.

Hitler decreed that it was a kind of

duty to die which many soldiers did. It

was simply that they didn't want to

suffer another

1918 that is a defeat because they

surrendered too early. This time the

soldiers would rather surrender 5

minutes after 12 than 5 minutes before

12.

All this, of course, with horrendous

losses.

January 1945 was the month with the most

casualties of the entire war with

450,000 dead. And in the weeks that

followed, the great dying continued.

Despite the omnipresent danger of death,

many German soldiers fought on doggedly,

especially on the Eastern Front.

The idea of surrendering from today's

point of view, one would say that the

war was lost after all. But that wasn't

an option for the vast majority of

soldiers on the Eastern

front. You only go into captivity when

you look down the barrel of the tank and

have no

alternative. Otherwise the measure is to

avoid if possible captivity which one

imagines terror.

By midappril the red army had reached

almost every part of the western bank of

the odor. On the zlo heights a natural

elevation in the od units entrenched

themselves in order to achieve the

impossible and to stop the advance on

Berlin. In the early morning hours of

April 16th, some 900,000 soldiers of the

first white Russian front supported by

heavy artillery fire began the assault

on the Zo Heights. The German defense

consisted of worn out frontline

fighters, Hitler youth, and KBH

soldiers, which the Vey administration

translated as fit for war. In soldier

jargon, can limp excellently.

Numerically, the Soviet enemy

outnumbered them at least 4 to one.

Nevertheless, they succeeded in stopping

the Red Army for the time being. Russian

commanding general Gorgi Zukov became

increasingly

nervous. The Soviet side was under

enormous

pressure. It was an unspoken goal to

conquer Berlin by Mayday.

The Soviet leadership reacted

accordingly and tried to break through

the German front line by any means

possible. In their desperation, the

commanders resorted to unconventional

means so they could announce the

demanded breakthrough. In doing so, they

showed no consideration for their own

soldiers.

One example was that the Soviet

attackers tried to illuminate the

battlefield with the help of search

lights. As a result, the German

defenders saw the silhouettes very

clearly and knew exactly what to shoot

at.

The toll in blood on both sides was

enormous. The Russians suffered more

than 30,000 casualties while the Germans

lost at least 12,000 men. After 4 days,

the road to Berlin was

[Music]

cleared. In the west, the situation for

the German defenders continued to

deteriorate. After crossing the Rine,

the Allies advanced inexraably eastward,

conquering city after city.

The strength of the Viamat had been

exhausted in February 45. And by March

of 45, they no longer had the strength

to maintain an orderly defense.

Everything was collapsing

like the Red Army in the east earlier.

As they advanced, the forces of the

Western powers were faced with the

evidence of the crimes of the Nazi era

to which millions of people had fallen

victim over the past years. In

midappril, British units reached the

Bergen Bellson concentration camp near

Cela. For years, people were tortured,

abused, and murdered there. The battle

hardy soldiers were used to death and

suffering, but what they saw there

dwarfed what they had experienced so

[Music]

far. British soldiers have described

that they thought they would be greeted

with cheers and that they would arrive

as

liberators. Instead, what they saw in

Been Belen was terrible emaciated

figures, corpses on the street.

The survivors were not able to move at

all. The cheers were quite limited

because everyone was too weak to express

human

emotion. By the end of the war, at least

75,000 prisoners were crammed there,

including many women and children. The

German Jewish girl, Anne Frank, who

later became famous, was also interned

there and died in the camp. The British

immediately set about feeding the

survivors. They succeeded in arresting

Ysef Kramer, the camp commander. To

their surprise, the ardent Nazi showed

no remorse.

[Music]

The camp commander still acted as if he

was the boss because he assumed that the

conquerors who arrived there also

considered the people lying there on

piles of corpses to be subhumans that

they would consider that normal in the

separate room he was in at some point

when the job of murder became routine.

He felt that he was doing a job that was

not morally wrong in the Nazi regime

because after all they were the enemies

of society and he was putting things in

life in

order. A few days earlier US troops had

liberated several concentration camps in

Tangia. They had taken control of

Bkhenvald and the Ordruff satellite

camp. For many gis what they saw in the

camps changed their attitude toward the

enemy. Most of my comrades had no

personal reason to fight the Germans.

One soldier later recalled, "They

thought that many of the stories they

had read or heard in newspapers were

made up, or at least exaggerated. Now

the soldiers were proved wrong. After

the liberation of the camps, the Allies

forced the population of neighboring

towns to visit the complexes and see for

themselves the

horror. For many Germans, that was a

shocking experience.

[Music]

The idea was when they were fully

confronted with the crimes, it would

start their cognitive process, which

should lead to the purification of the

German civilian

population. It is well known that this

didn't work immediately. Some people

reacted rather defensively to this.

But one can at least theorize whether it

was a beginning so that parts of the

civilian population came to terms with

the crimes in the first

place and that at least hopefully then

did lead to a

reorientation. On the 19th of April, US

units reached Leipik. Joseph Gerbles

appealed to the German population on

that Thursday. bravely take on a fight

that is inevitable and unavoidable. To

stand upright before one's fate with a

clear conscience and a pure heart. To

endure all suffering and every trial,

but never even think of wavering in the

agonizing hour of the final decision and

throwing in the towel. That is not only

manly, it is also German in the best

sense of the word. Pathetic words that

were unable to stop the advance of the

gis. In Leipzig, the main train station

was quickly

taken. There was only isolated

resistance. Resistance groups had been

distributing leaflets for days with

slogans such as end the insane war of

the Nazis and bring out the white flags.

Many Leipiggers had obviously taken the

messages to heart and hoped for a

bloodless end to the war.

[Music]

They kind of just wanted to get through

it. They waited for the Americans.

That's when you had the most hope. And

somewhere at some point this madness

would end. At least that was the

dominant feeling among the people who no

longer believed in national

socialism. But as in all parts of the

Reich, there were also fanatical

supporters of the regime in Saxony. At

city hall, the Americans made a gruesome

discovery. The mayor had committed along

with his wife and daughter. The city

treasurer also followed them to their

deaths.

This situation was accompanied by an

unprecedented wave

for so for many people it really was the

downfall and they couldn't imagine a

world beyond the NS but they could

imagine a world beyond these

conditions. That was of course the

unique mood of doom that prevailed at

that

time. 50 km northeast of Leipig lies

Togo. The small town on the elb became

world famous shortly before the end of

the war. On April 26th, 1945, soldiers

from the Red Army and the US Army

celebrated their meeting there. In fact,

their units had met for the first time

the day before. Three and a half years

of a brotherhood in arms against the

Nazis lay behind

them. The new US President Harry S.

Truman spoke from Washington. The

joining of our armed forces at this

moment is a signal to ourselves and to

the world that our nations working

together in the cause of peace and

freedom is an effective

cooperation. But reality was different.

It was a friendship whose end would not

be long in coming.

[Music]

While propaganda images were still being

taken on the shore, people were fleeing

in boats across the Elb to the west.

They wanted to flee the Soviet sphere of

influence. It was a step that many

soldiers also took during those weeks.

As here in Tanga Munda, soldiers were

desperately trying to get across the el.

Their motive was

clear. For German soldiers, it was clear

in Allied captivity, you were likely to

be treated somewhat in accordance with

the Geneva Conventions. And so, it was

much easier for a German soldier to

raise his hands on the Western front

than on the Eastern

front. Having arrived in the territory

that was barely under Western Allied

control, many of the infantry men

surrendered. During that time, US troop

cameramen documented on almost a daily

basis with color film how more and more

members of the Vermach were putting

their hands in the air instead of on a

gun. This was not without danger. The

commander-in-chief of the German army

group south issued an unequivocal order

at the end of March. Anyone who strays

from the troops in combat must report

immediately to the nearest fighting

troop. Finding them is not difficult.

The noise of battle is the shest guide.

Anyone who disobeyed the order ran the

risk of being sentenced to death for

desertion. But more and more soldiers

were willing to take that risk.

The Americans took millions of prisoners

of

war. The vehemat was crumbling as they

crossed the Rine. And now the question

was what to do with them.

The men were initially locked up in

fencedin open air meadows and fields.

Then the idea came up to group them

together in huge camps. Thousands of

infantry men were loaded onto military

trucks and taken to the rhinand. In

April, huge open spaces along the river

were fenced in with barb

wire. The so-called Rin Meadow camps

were built to make it difficult for the

prisoners to escape. The complexes were

built on the west bank of the river.

They were officially called prisoner of

war temporary enclosures. The sanitary

conditions and the food supply in the

camps were catastrophic from the very

start.

Now the policy was that the Germans

should feel that they had lost the

war. They should understand what they

had done.

There had to be punishment. That's what

the soldiers had to endure there because

they were barely fed. Thousands

died. And you have to say quite clearly

they died senselessly because the

Americans could take better care of him.

But they accepted the fact that a few

thousand would die there.

[Music]

While hundreds of thousands of soldiers

in captivity in the west awaited the end

of the war, people in Berlin faced the

prospect of a final battle proclaimed by

the regime. For weeks that spring, the

Berliners had been setting up

1945 barricades and roadblocks and armed

themselves as best they could for the

impending attack by the Red Army. An

endeavor that was as helpless as it was

hopeless. On the 1st of February, the

city was declared a fortress.

The battle for Berlin was the last act

of the war. At that time, in 1939,

Berlin was a city that had over 4

million

inhabitants. At the end, there were

about 2.5 million left, and this very

densely populated area now became a

battlefield. On April 21st, the first

Soviet units crossed the Berlin ring

road. As heavy artillery fire began and

the Soviet air force attacked and Red

Army troops advanced into the outlying

districts, propaganda minister Joseph

Gobles addressed the city's population

by

radio.

for

Mongol.

for a last loyal contingent of the

regime was forming up in the ruins to

defend Berlin and the Fura. The dictator

had decided to stay in the city.

Before these battles began, they had

considered flying Hitler out to be

garden. But he deliberately chose a

really big stage, a stage on which he

could act as a statesman and a

general. The Red Army soldiers fought

their way inexurably through the

outskirts toward the government

district. There was heavy fighting in

the ruined landscape which was

documented by Russian cameramen. 30,000

m of propaganda footage were created

during those bloody battles. The Soviet

commanders showed no consideration

neither for German civilians nor for

their own

soldiers. Berlin could have been

surrounded. Instead, they took it house

by house. And 10,000 Red Army soldiers

died in that senseless fighting. And the

way the Soviet Union waged war, well,

that surprised even the

Allies. On the German side, too, the

price that had to be paid was enormous.

Exactly how many people lost their lives

in Hitler's capital is unknown. At noon

on April 25th, the Red Army closed the

ring around Berlin. Their tanks advanced

toward the center of the city. Hitler

remained in his bunker under the Reich

Chancellery, refusing to acknowledge

defeat. For the last time, the Furer let

himself be seen in the ruins of his

official residence. It is not known

exactly when this photo was taken.

Hitler then asked how long they could

hold out, and the commander said only 24

hours. no longer and only then, you can

imagine only then after some delay did

Hitler decide to commit.

He really tried to continue the fighting

until the last conceivable moment.

Hitler dictated his political legacy.

Then he married his longtime lover, Ava

Brown. In the early afternoon of April

30th, they both retired to their private

rooms in the bunker. These are photos of

the rooms taken weeks later. The

dictator shot himself in the head with a

bullet. His wife died by poison. Both

bodies were then dowsted with gasoline

in the garden of the Reich Chancellory

and burned.

[Music]

Hitler always repeated, "I will not stop

until 5 minutes past 12." That was

basically brutal, inhuman, but also a

simple strategy which he implemented to

the

end. Even after the death of the furer,

the fighting continued. On the 1st of

May, the Red Army had taken parts of the

government district and stood within

sight of the Brandenburg gate and the

Reich Chancellery. Joseph Gerbles was

now in command here. Hitler had decreed

that Grand Admiral Dunitz would become

Reich President and Propaganda Minister

Gobble's Reich Chancellor. The latter

tried to start negotiating surrender

terms with the Red Army, but the Soviets

on Stalin's orders insisted on the

immediate and unconditional surrender of

the

city. On the 1st of May 1945, the

majority of Berliners recognized the

reality on the ground and hung white

flags from their windows. In the

evening, the Greater German radio

reported a lie.

In the next few hours, Joseph Gerbles

also took his life. His wife died with

him. Earlier, they had poisoned their

children. In the mind of the fanatical

Nazi Gerbles, that was inevitable.

Gerbles wrote in his diary that when a

fortress commander surrendered, he

didn't even have the courage to kill

himself. He was consistent and it was

also consistent to kill his children

because after a Soviet occupation, life

would no longer be possible and they

shouldn't have to endure

that a life in a postNazi era.

The charred remains of the gobbles and

the bodies of their six children were

lined up by Red Army soldiers in the

garden of the Reich Chancellery a short

time later. In the meantime, Berlin had

surrendered unconditionally. The Soviets

took command of the city on the 2nd of

May,

[Music]

1945. But there was still no peace. A

woman in Berlin described the

apocalyptic scenes in her diary. Panic

reigns in the city. Dismay and horror.

Wherever we go, robbery, looting,

violence. In unrestrained lust, the army

of our victors has pounced on the women

of Berlin. They ravish our daughters.

They our women, the men complained. Not

once, no, six times, no, 10 times, and

20 times. There is no other conversation

in the

city. Even after the fall of the German

capital, the war was still not over. The

new government under Reich President

Donuts tried to delay the impending

surrender. Their logic to buy time so

that as many German soldiers as possible

could reach the areas controlled by the

British and Americans and thus escape

the dreaded Soviets. Here, as in Saxony,

long lines of soldiers formed in many

places. All were headed west.

The commander-in-chief of the Allied

Expeditionary Forces, US General

Eisenhower, had been based in Ron,

France since September

1944. On the 6th of May, a German

delegation under Colonel General Alfred

Yodel went to the city. In a middle

school in Ru Jolikur, a decision was

made to end the war. completely

misjudging the situation, the German

negotiators still believed they had room

to

negotiate. There was still this idea,

we'll

negotiate, we'll surrender only in the

west. But then it was total surrender.

After all German attempts had failed,

Yodel radioed Reich President Durnets at

a/4 to 10 in the evening. I see no other

way out than chaos or signing. A few

hours later, he received a reply.

Authority to sign granted. At 2:41 on

the morning of May 7th, Yodel signed the

document.

In a little schoolhouse in Rance,

France, came the unconditional surrender

of

Germany. General Alfred Yodel, Nazi

Chief of Staff, signed the document

formally ending all German resistance as

drawn by the representatives of Russia,

Britain, France, and the United States.

General Walter Beetle Smith signed for

the Supreme Command, and the end of one

of history's most massive and most

brilliant campaigns brought a moment of

well-earned joy to an American soldier

named Ike

[Music]

Eisenhower. As in London, joy erupted

across much of Europe when the news from

France was announced. After more than 5

and 1/2 years, peace would return to the

continent. But not everyone was

celebrating exuberantly. On the Soviet

side, mistrust mingled with the joy of

victory.

Unsettled the Soviets because there was

a great fear on both sides that, so to

speak, one side could make a separate

peace with the other side and then

somehow still continue the war or

something like that. And the Soviet

Union then insisted that this surrender

ceremony will be repeated again.

The procedure was repeated on May 8th in

a former Vermacht Pioneer and

Engineering School in the Berlin

Carl'shorst District. That way, Soviet

fears were to be allayed and the

contribution made by the Red Army in the

liberation of Europe could be properly

recognized. General Gorgi Zukov took

part in the ceremony on behalf of the

Soviets. In addition to the British and

Americans, French representatives were

now part of the delegation of the

victorious powers. Field Marshall Vilhel

Kitle, the head of the Supreme Command

of the Vermach, arrived to represent

Germany. The surrender was signed on the

night of the 8th of May. It read, "We,

the undersigned, acting by proxy for and

on behalf of the Supreme Command of the

German armed forces, hereby declare the

unconditional surrender of all land,

sea, and air forces under German command

or control at the present time

simultaneously to the Supreme Commander

of the Allied Expeditionary Forces and

the Supreme Command of the Red Army.

[Music]

At that moment, which was the process of

several days, when the Germans

capitulated, everything that the German

Empire had to offer in terms of power

was used up.

Zero hour is a very old-fashioned term,

but it describes it. There is nothing of

substance left of the military and

politics.

A few days after the formal end of the

war, one of the best known leaders of

the Third Reich fell into the hands of

the Allies. Rash Marshall Herman Guring

had long been second in command. In the

last days of the war, however, he fell

from grace and was deposed by Hitler.

After the collapse of the regime, he now

saw himself once again in a stateup

supporting role and was surprised to

find that like any ordinary soldier, he

was first disarmed and then imprisoned.

The moment he was captured by the

Americans, he adopted a different role

and claimed that he had been the foreign

policy officer who tried to prevent what

happened.

He claimed to be the moderating factor.

He said that the allies now needed him

as a prominent man of the state to now

lead the German population into a new

era. Stuff like that, wrong, confused

assumptions. In

1935, Guring had promulgated the

Nuremberg laws which sealed the

disenfranchisement of Jewish citizens.

Later, he signed the order for the

so-called final solution of the Jewish

question and thus played a part in the

Holocaust. A few months in the fall of

1946, after these films were made,

Guring along with other Nazi criminals

were indicted by the Allies and

sentenced to death in Nuremberg.

However, the sentence could not be

carried out.

He had hidden two poison capsules in his

luggage and had written a farewell

letter. In it he wrote, "The German rice

marshall will not let himself be

executed by

hanging. So I choose the death of the

great Hannibal." And then shortly before

the execution, he poisoned

himself. German war criminals. On the

20th of May, they noticed a man who

called himself Heinvik Hittinger and

claimed to be a member of the secret

field police. The policeman looked

suspicious and was arrested. During his

interrogation in Lunborg, he was caught

up in contradictions. They also noticed

that he resembled the most wanted Nazi

mass

murderer. Hinrich Himmler was caught.

When they went to search him, he bit

down on a cyanide capsule hidden in his

mouth. After Hitler and Gerbles, the

former Reichkes Furer SS thus also

cowardly evaded responsibility for his

murderous

actions. Wednesday the 23rd of May

1945 also marked the end of Grand

Admiral Dunit's insane attempt to rule

Germany from Fenceborg. Dunit had been

appointed Reich President by Hitler, but

in fact remained completely powerless.

Together with other men of his cabinet,

he was arrested. Thus, only 3 weeks

after the its leader, the Third Reich

was

[Music]

history. On June 24th,

1945, victory over Nazi Germany was

celebrated in Moscow with a huge

military parade in Red Square.

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

for the Soviet side. Of course, it was

existential, especially after what they

went

through. There were about 26.6 6 million

victims. That's the official figure,

both civilians and soldiers. And that

moment of victory was, of course, quite

central to the Stalinist

regime. With Stalin watching, 10,000

soldiers from all branches of the armed

forces marched past Lenin's mausoleum.

General Zukov, who had led the offensive

against Berlin, played a central role.

[Music]

Sukov was the one who embodied this.

This big heavy man on a strong white

horse that embodied victory for the

people. The downside for Zukov was that

his military career as well as his

political influence in general was of

course over because Stalin as General

Lissimo was of course considered the

actual architect of this victory and

that legend should not be changed.

Stalin was at the height of his power.

With the victory over Hitler's Reich,

Eastern Europe had fallen into the hands

of the Soviet leader. From then on,

Stalin's soldiers were his most loyal

supporters. With their help, he could

consolidate the Soviet Union's status as

a superpower and stand up to the United

States in a new conflict that was slowly

brewing, the Cold War. A time when

hundreds of thousands of Red Army

soldiers were sent to their death seemed

to be

forgotten. In Berlin, the picture was

different. The city lay in ruins. More

than 28 square kilometers of the city

had been destroyed over the years by air

raids and the defensive battle against

the Red Army. The city center had been

hit particularly hard. The magnificent

boulevard Linden where 12 years earlier

Nazis had celebrated Hitler's seizure of

power and paraded through the

Brandenburgg gate with torches lay in

[Music]

ruins. Some Berliners lived in

apartments without exterior walls called

birds nests. But almost immediately

after the Soviets moved in, people set

about rebuilding. Cleanup crews were on

the move everywhere. Their pay for the

hard work, 72 fenigs an

hour. The four victorious powers

officially assumed supreme government

power in Germany. It was exercised by

the Allied Control Council, which was

made up of representatives of Great

Britain, France, the US, and the Soviet

Union. At the beginning of July, the

agreed upon division of Berlin into

sectors was implemented. The three

Western allies moved into their areas in

the city. US troops were accompanied by

cameramen of the Special Film Project

186 unit. Their job was to document the

bomb damage on the German side. More and

more frequently, however, they also

filmed

people like these children in Berlin,

who presumably in search of relatives

spoke directly into the camera. The

sound on the film of these scenes did

not survive, nor is there any

information about whether their search

was

successful. In the middle of the month,

the new US President Harry S. Truman

landed in the city. Seeing the condition

of Berlin made the democratic politician

pensive. He noted, "I witnessed a great

world tragedy, and I was grateful from

the bottom of my heart that my country

had been spared this unimaginable

destruction." Truman had traveled to

Germany to consult with the Soviets and

the British about how to proceed in the

future. The venue for the summit meeting

was Sicilian Hof Palace in Potdam. It

was the home of the German crowned

prince and his family before 1918.

Starting on July 17th, representatives

of the three main allies met in the

palace. It was an effort to publicly

demonstrate unity after their triumph

over the enemy. In addition to US

President Harry Truman, Stalin was also

there. The British side was initially

represented by Winston Churchill who was

replaced during the course of the

conference after an electoral defeat.

The aim in potlam was we have won and we

are now collectively responsible for

moving this continent securely into the

future.

But as we all know, war and violence

continued.

An end to the common ground of the

anti-Hitler coalition was not long in

coming. Just before the conference

began, President Truman received news

that after a long effort, a new weapon

with highly destructive and threatening

potential was at his disposal.

[Music]

The US had been working on an atomic

bomb for a long time. The tests had

progressed to a point that the bombs

could then be used. It was also apparent

to the United States that sooner or

later, for ideological reasons, the

Soviet Union would become an adversary.

and they wanted to demonstrate that the

US was technically able and ready to use

atomic

bombs. In the coming weeks, intensive

negotiations took place at Sicilian Hof

Palace. The big three agreed on the

amount of reparations Germany had to pay

and on the denazification,

democratization, and demilitarization of

the country. Geographical changes were

also determined. East Prussia and the

areas east of the Odor and Nisa rivers,

for example, were separated from

Germany.

What they also decided in Potam was the

resettlement of the Germanspeaking

population of Eastern Europe. That is

the so-called contractual definition of

resettlement. All remaining Germans were

to be removed from Eastern Europe.

In the run-up to the summit, German

speakaking people had been expelled from

Eastern Europe. Those expulsions took

place mostly in the Sudatan land, which

had been annexed by the German Reich in

1938, but also in Poland, and often it

was done with great brutality.

The Czech government in exile under

Bennis said they would not be punished,

but that such an expulsion was a logical

consequence because of the previously

German forced

rule and German property could be taken

away from them without any further ado.

For after the agreement in Pottsam, a

regulated phase of expulsions followed

in late summer. Once again, large

streams of refugees set out for the

West. But those people were not always

welcome in their new

homeland. After the war, Germany had to

deal with a multitude of problems. There

were many who had been bombed out.

poverty, worries about the future. So

that an influx of a large number of

people was not exactly celebrated. In

fact, many were greeted with blatant

rejection. They were also perceived as

foreign, had a different dialect, looked

different. In addition, there was

interconfessional mixing. Catholics came

to Protestant areas and Protestants went

to Catholic areas which was problematic

at the

time. In total, at least 12 million

people of Germanic origin were affected

by flight, expulsion, and forced

immigration. Despite the challenges,

many managed to quickly settle into

their new homeland.

It was a very very great achievement

that these people were accommodated in

the occupation zones. But there was also

a concerted effort on the part of the

people who came to build a new life

under difficult

conditions. And it was amazing that

people managed to get a foothold there

in a relatively short time.

While the guns were silent in Europe

after more than 5 and a half years,

World War II was not yet over in the

Pacific. The Japanese Empire was

fanatically resisting the threat of

defeat. The battles for Okinawa had been

raging since the beginning of April. The

island's defenders had entrenched

themselves in the hinterland and often

fought to the death against the

attacking US units. It was only after

nearly 3 months of fighting that the

island was finally conquered. At the end

of June

1945, after a dearly bought victory, the

US military leadership began to consider

its further action against the enemy.

Okinawa,

the Battle of Okinawa, as well as other

battles in 1945, had shown the United

States that it would probably be

unrealistic to conduct a landing

operation on the Japanese mother

islands. And that then led to the

decision to use atomic bombs. The logic

being, it's better if the Japanese die

rather than if American soldiers die.

The plan was quickly put into action

after Japan refused a US ultimatum for

unconditional surrender. In late July,

US B29 bombers were loaded with a new

type of weapon of mass destruction on

the Pacific island of Timan in early

August. On August 6th, the first atomic

bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. 3 days

later, Nagasaki was the target of

another atomic bomb. At least 100,000

people were killed instantly in the

attacks. Tens of thousands of others

were irradiated, pushing the death toll

higher in the years to come.

But it also became clear that protecting

the Japanese, protecting Japanese life

of course was not how people were

thinking. The question, should we do

this? That had been lost during the

course of the war.

Footage shot weeks later in Hiroshima.

At 8:16, the bomb had been detonated at

an altitude of about 600 meters,

obliterating the city. The pictures

showed the devastating extent of the

destructive power of the new weapon and

heralded a new

age. On August 15th, Emperor Hirohito

addressed his people over the radio. It

was the first time the Japanese had

heard the voice of the emperor.

[Music]

You

[Music]

think I need

[Music]

On the morning of September 2nd, 1945,

the battleship USS Missouri was anchored

in Tokyo Bay. Also aboard the flagship

of the US Third Fleet was Commander

George Costco. He had a small camera

loaded with color film with him. And so

he shot this footage of the formal

signing of Japan's

[Music]

surrender. Aboard the USS Missouri in

Tokyo Bay. On Sunday, September the 2nd,

1945, the most horrible war in history

came to its complete and formal end.

Foreign Minister Shikamitsu signed for

Japan.

Douglas MacArthur, Supreme

Commander. General Su Yong Chang, signed

for

China. In New York City, as throughout a

rejoicing nation and world, vast throngs

of grateful, happy people celebrate the

end of fighting, the dawn of peace. Two

million New Yorkers jammed Time Square.

It's official. It's all over. It's total

victory.

The balance sheet of the Second World

War was staggering. The number of its

victims can only be estimated. But there

were at least 60 million war dead. A

number that cannot begin to describe the

unimaginable suffering that began with

Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland. The

costliest war in the history of mankind.

lasted six years and one day.

2,193 days of suffering and death.