All language subtitles for The.Sound.and.the.Fury.S01E04.Restructuring.the.World.1944.1945.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

80 years ago,

a war of an unprecedented
scale shook our planet

and changed the face of the world.

Never had war been so
widespread, so brutal,

or so destructive.

A torrent of fire and steel,

steeped in courage and cruelty.

From the Pacific Ocean
to the Mediterranean Sea,

from the deserts of Africa
to the Russian steppe,

the war broke up nations
and forged empires.

It redefined our borders, our ideals,

our fears.

The Second World War shaped
the world as we know it.

This is the story of a war
that changed everything.

The spring of 1944.

For several weeks, an
uninterrupted flow of troops

and equipment had been crossing
the ocean to Great Britain,

where the most formidable armada

in history was being put into place.

Its mission, to break through
the Nazis' Atlantic wall

and establish a second
front on European soil.

Its code name, Overlord.

Convinced that the Allies
would target northwest Europe,

Hitler built the so-called Atlantic wall,

which he hoped would repel
the Allies back to the sea.

The British knew that it was pointless

to deny the imminence of D-Day,

so they set out to deceive the enemy

into expecting them anywhere but Normandy.

Fake radio traffic and
phony press articles.

They did everything

to suggest the operation would take place

along the coast around Calais.

Phantom divisions amassed
in the southeast of England

to fool German aviation,

fitted out with dummy rubber
tanks and wooden aircraft.

At the same time,

the French resistance would
sabotage the railway network

to prevent the Nazis from
sending reinforcements

to northern France.

On June the 3rd, the
preparations were complete.

The soldiers waited, gripped by anxiety.

In the West, steel was about to rain down

on the beaches of France.

In the east, the Red Army was preparing

to sweep through central Europe.

The war had one last act to play.

Despite the Allies having a common enemy,

a silent rivalry was already brewing

over who would reap the spoils of victory.

Because behind each advance,

another battle was being
played out, that of influence.

During the night of June
the 5th to the 6th, 1944,

thousands of parachuters
fell from the sky.

Go!

They're tasked to
destroy enemy gun batteries,

to take bridges, and secure
areas inland of certain beaches.

The bombers of the Royal
and US Air Forces joined in

to destroy the formidable Atlantic wall.

Finally, a vast armada
emerged from the sea mist.

D-Day began.

With it, America wasn't
just sending its GIs

to European soil, it was
asserting its influence

and ushering in a new era.

At 5:30 AM, a torrent of fire rained down

on the Normandy coast.

Tens of thousands of men braved
the waves and their fear.

Americans, British, and Canadians,
along with 177 Frenchmen,

advanced towards the beaches.

Men who had crossed the Atlantic

to defend a continent which
wasn't their own would become

the stuff of legend.

Their sacrifice would forge the image

of an America that saves the world.

By noon, the beaches
were taken, a miracle.

With one exception, Omaha.

Later nicknamed Bloody Omaha,

it would leave deep scars on both sides.

Above the dunes of Omaha Beach,

German Sergeant Heinrich
Severloh had his eyes fixed

on the shore.

He relentlessly fired his machine gun,

spreading death among the enemy ranks.

Suddenly, a couple of dozen meters away,

he spotted a young American soldier.

The sergeant aimed his rifle and shot.

The young soldier dropped down dead.

This image would haunt Sergeant Severloh

for the rest of his life.

World War II was a horrifying
experience for all soldiers

and left many of them with severe trauma.

The Allies set up
psychological support units

to counsel the men.

Soldiers of all armies suffered

from the same symptoms caused by war.

But post-traumatic stress
wasn't always taken seriously.

Most of the afflicted were
still treated as fakers,

executed as a warning by the
Wehrmacht or the Red Army.

By the night of June the 6th,

all of the beaches had been taken.

The heaviest losses were at Omaha,

but despite the tragedy, the
Allies counted 10,000 victims

as opposed to the expected 25,000.

The Atlantic wall hadn't
lasted a single day.

156,000 men had landed in Normandy.

The GIs advanced through
the French countryside,

handing out cigarettes and chewing gum

to the people who gave
them a hero's welcome.

The landing sealed the
fate of Western Europe.

Its liberation would align
half of the continent

with the United States.

From rock and roll to blue jeans,

from the movies to Coca-Cola,

the old and new continents blended

as the 20th century became
the American century.

♪ Gimme cheating, drinking,
and outlaw songs ♪

♪ Hard times, foolish
pride, done me wrong ♪

♪ Flirting with the devil,
get right with the man ♪

While in the East,

the Soviet Union was
leaving its footprints

on the ruins of the Nazi empire.

The noose was tightening
around Germany's neck,

but Hitler categorically
refused to surrender.

The Red Army went on the
offensive in Belarus.

On June the 22nd, Stalin launched

the operation he had promised
the British and Americans.

Three years to the day after
the Nazi invasion of the USSR,

it was finally time for revenge.

Millions of men hurled
themselves into battle.

But the Soviet forces were far
superior to those of Germany.

In just five days, the
Wehrmacht was swept aside.

Operation Bagration was
a decisive turning point.

The Red Army's advance preceded that

of the Allies in the West,
laying the foundations

for the Soviet Union's
domination of Eastern Europe.

For Stalin, it was not only a question

of defeating the Third Reich,
but of seizing territories

where communism would ultimately take hold

for decades to come.

Czech leaders
like Milos Jakes are trying

to keep their feet in a minefield

of Middle European communism
that threatens to engulf them.

On July the 3rd,

after Minsk had fallen into Soviet hands,

the Red Army pressed on

through the Baltic states and Poland.

Its advance suggested
the future Iron Curtain,

the invisible border that
would one day become real.

Stalin savored victory with
the parade of the vanquished.

On July the 17th, 57,000 German
prisoners of war were forced

to march across Moscow
as Russians looked on.

Unlike the Soviets,

who owed their success to the
concentration of their troops,

American forces were divided
between Europe and Asia.

Gathered around President Roosevelt,

US high command began
planning another landing

like the one in Normandy.

In Asia, GIs continued their
progress from island to island,

gradually approaching Japan.

From the coast of New
Guinea to the Marianas,

from Guam to the Philippines.

But the fighting resulted in blood baths,

as Japanese resolve did not
waver despite the defeats.

On the island of Saipan,

soldiers and civilians fought
down to the last bullet

in caves and tunnels

before succumbing to
grenades or flamethrowers.

Through fear or fanaticism,

many preferred death over surrender.

4,000 of the island's inhabitants,
men, women, and children,

flung themselves from the clifftops.

Facing defeat in the Pacific Islands,

the Japanese set about
showing their strength

on the mainland with Operation Ichi-Go,

a campaign of major land battles in China,

which would seriously disturb

the country's political balance.

The Japanese crushed
the Chinese guerillas.

It was a heavy blow to Nationalist
leader Chiang Kai-shek,

who lost a huge number of soldiers.

Unlike his ally of convenience,
the Communist Mao Zedong.

In fewer than 10 years,

Communist troops would definitively
defeat the Nationalists

and seize power.

This forced Chiang Kai-shek into exile,

giving birth to a second China

which owed obedience
to capitalism, Taiwan.

Spared by Operation Ichi-Go in the south,

the Communists took advantage
of the Nationalists' defeat

to claim its territories.

Communist assistance

to the ailing populations
helped them make inroads

among the peasants.

China slowly began its advance

towards a new type of communism,
Maoist, popular, and rural.

After Stalinism, Maoism became a new ideal

for part of the youth and the third world.

In the summer of 1944,

Nazi Germany was on the point of collapse.

The highest ranked military
officers anticipated the end

and hoped to negotiate
an honorable defeat,

which was impossible under Hitler.

At his HQ in East Prussia, his
officers gathered around him.

It was 12:37 PM on July the 20th, 1944.

Colonel Claus von
Stauffenberg discretely placed

an attache case containing
a bomb beneath the table.

He was part of a plot
aiming to kill the Fuhrer.

Five minutes later, an explosion
rocked the conference room.

Somehow Hitler survived.

Increasingly paranoid,

he brutally punished those
responsible for this affront.

Suspects were arrested and the
plotters summarily executed.

The German people remained
united behind their Fuhrer,

prepared to defend the
empire he had built,

not for an instant believing
it could be defeated.

In mid-July, Soviet
soldiers entered Poland.

The citizens of Warsaw had
been under Russian occupation

since 1939 and had suffered
the massacres carried out

by the Red Army in 1940

and domination by the Nazis after that.

In August of 1944, they
rose up against the Germans,

hoping to avoid Soviet tutelage.

The Polish resistance
wanted to liberate Warsaw

before the Red Army's arrival.

Positioned on the other
side of the river Vistula,

Stalin's troops abandoned the insurgents

to play out the fight lost in advance

without coming to their aid.

The Germans won, razed the capital,

and decimated the citizens
or sent them to the camps.

At the same time, in France,

the Allies progressed from Normandy

towards the south and east,
helped by the resistance.

To speed up the liberation of France,

a second invasion was put into action.

On August the 15th,

the Allies landed on the
beaches of the Riviera.

2/3 of the troops were French,
mainly men from the colonies,

riflemen from Western North Africa taking

their very first steps on the mainland.

Thanks to them, France took
part in its own liberation.

An ambition shared by Paris.

The capitol had to free itself.

This was the condition
demanded by General de Gaulle

so that a defeated nation
could rise from its ashes

and crucial to maintaining its
voice in the post-war world.

On August the 19th, 1944,

Parisians rose up in the city of light.

Most of them were communist
members of the resistance.

If they could chase out the Germans,

they could impose their
authority on France

and challenge de Gaulle.

To impose himself as
liberated France's new leader,

the general negotiated with the Allies

for General Leclerc's
Second Armored Division

to enter Paris first.

A few days earlier,

young resistance fighter
Madeline Riffaud shot

a German officer on the
bank of the River Seine.

Two bullets to the head.

Sentenced to death, she
was waiting in her cell

when the first gunshots
of the uprising rang out.

She was freed on August the 19th,

on the same day as the capitol.

On August the 26th,

General de Gaulle paraded
before cheering crowds.

He'd won the crazy gamble
he made with his appeal

of June the 18th, 1940,

and convinced the Allies,
who had long distrusted him,

to recognize his legitimacy.

United during the war and
then after the liberation,

Gaullists and Communists formed

a national constituent government,

which would bring in
unprecedented political

and social measures,

like social welfare.

And at last, the right
to vote for French women.

The Third Reich was in its death throes.

Allied bombers struck targets
in Germany unrelentingly

and the Soviets marked
up victory after victory.

In Romania and Bulgaria,

after an offensive
lasting only three weeks.

In Yugoslavia, with the help
of its resistance movement.

While in Greece,

taking advantage of the
widespread collapse of Germany,

the British marched in as liberators.

A victory for Churchill,

who since 1940 had refused
to abandon the Greeks.

Against all odds, the
Fuhrer remained convinced

he would turn the situation around.

He had faith in his engineers

who had built the first jet
plane in history capable

of flying at 1,000 kilometers an hour.

He was also convinced

that with his new V1 and V2
rockets exploding over London,

he would bring the British to their knees.

But the Fuhrer's miracle
weapons served only

to maintain the illusion

that a German victory was still possible.

Self-deception that was shared

on the other side of the
globe by the Japanese leaders.

In the Pacific, the Japanese
army was in desperate straits.

The American forces were about

to launch their offensive
on the Philippines.

So Japan invented a new way of fighting.

Young pilots in the prime
of life would defy death.

The first kamikazes were
ready to kill themselves

by voluntarily nose diving into
the hulls of American ships.

In truth, the majority
of them simply yielded

to hierarchical or group pressure.

On October the 25th, 1944,
close to the island of Leyte,

23-year-old Yuki Oseki
flew his Mitsubishi Zero,

loaded with 250 kilos of bombs,

directly into the USS St. Lo.

Onboard the aircraft carrier,

third class electrician, Orville Bethard,

looked up just in time to see
the plane crash into the deck.

The psychological effect was
huge, the attacks devastating.

Horrified, American sailors
lapsed into psychosis.

In their eyes,

this morbid spectacle resulted
from extreme fanaticism.

Used as a last resort
at the end of the war

by a regime on its last legs,
in the following decades,

the suicide attack became a
favorite means of destruction

of terrorist organizations.

Madness relentlessly repeated to this day.

World War II had reached breaking point,

an ascent to extremes

where moral considerations
had all but disappeared.

And the kamikaze attacks were
the ultimate manifestation.

But after this shock,

the US Navy came to its
senses, counter attacked,

and crushed the Japanese
Imperial Navy for good.

30 seconds!

The conquest
of the Philippines lasted

several months more.

The next step, the
invasion of Japan itself,

would be a blood bath.

In the United States,

analysts placed the figure
at 500,000 American losses.

Contrary to the tyrannical
regimes, democracies had scruples

about sacrificing the
lives of their soldiers.

Their only preoccupation
was to obtain victory

at the least possible cost.

The first results of
the Manhattan Project,

begun two years earlier,
were running late.

At this point, nothing could guarantee

that the atom bomb would be ready

in a reasonable amount of time.

Early in 1945, the Allies
had liberated all of France.

By taking Alsace, German since 1940,

they were at the gates of the Third Reich.

But on January the 12th, 1945,

it was the Russians who first
marched onto German soil.

From Ukraine and Belarus,

the Red Army pushed on to
70 kilometers from Berlin.

The balance of power was disproportionate,

one German to three Russians.

Driven on by approaching victory,

the Soviet troops had acquired

fearsome, battle-hardened efficiency,

forged in the brutality of ever
more devastating offensives.

Their progress was marked
by destruction and fear.

German civilians bowed down
before this new offensive,

particularly women,

whom the Red Army raked in
their hundreds of thousands.

In Berlin, the Fuhrer seemed

to have lost all sense of reality.

On January the 16th,

he and his most loyal
officers locked themselves

in the Chancellery bunker.

Appointed Reich
Plenipotentiary for Total War,

Joseph Goebbels conscripted
valid men in factories,

emptied the administration offices,

and closed down theaters.

Landlocked sailors

and grounded aviators were
turned into infantrymen.

16 and 17 year olds were called up

to fight under the swastika flag.

It was these men and boys,
poorly prepared and barely armed,

who would die in the final battles.

Hitler was prepared to lead
his people into the abyss.

He ordered that his
soldiers hold the lines

at the cost of their lives
and destroy any infrastructure

that could be useful to the Allies.

Hitler clung on to one last hope,

which bordered on obsession.

Amid the chaos, he was
convinced that the alliance

between the Soviets and the
Americans was about to collapse,

a turning point which, to his
mind, would change everything.

On the contrary,

none of the big three
Allied powers envisaged

a divided peace.

In February 1945, their leaders met again,

this time at Yalta in Crimea.

Just two months before his death,

the increasingly sick
Roosevelt thought only

of maintaining peace between
Moscow and Washington.

They wouldn't be allies forever.

Roosevelt and Stalin both knew this.

The USSR agreed to join
the United Nations.

Against Churchill's advice,

the US President accepted the viewpoints

of the Soviet dictator.

Stalin obtained guarantees
regarding Eastern Europe,

which he was in the process of conquering.

In return, the USSR would allow America

to regain its sphere of influence in Asia.

For nearly 50 years, former
allies turned rivals clashed

over their spheres of influence,

striving to avoid all out war,

haunted by the fear of a third World War.

The big three did agree on one point,

the German people must take
stock of their country's defeat.

Peace would only be
obtained through force.

Two days after Yalta,
in the east of Germany,

the Royal and US Air Forces
dropped almost 4,000 tons

of bombs on the historic city of Dresden,

causing 25,000 deaths.

In the days that followed,

similar raids were made
on other German cities.

During the German Blitz of London in 1940,

bombings had specifically
targeted civilians.

As the end of the war drew nearer,

the Allies put a temporary hold

on their own moral considerations.

For months, British and
American bombs had ravaged

German positions across occupied Europe.

From the French coast to
the heart of the continent,

Europe would soon lie in ruins,
unable to rise on its own,

giving way to a crushing dependence

on Washington and Moscow,

two giants that would impose
their rules and vision.

But from this blank slate
would also emerge a drive

for unity, the ambition to
rebuild a democratic order.

Which will
bar ancient rivalries

and the causes of war.

Since
marching onto German soil,

the Red Army had vented its anger.

Rapes, pillaging, murders.

Stalin's troops brutally
made the Germans pay

for their barbarity.

The paranoid master of the
Kremlin urged his forces on

towards Berlin, fearing that the Americans

and British would beat
him to the finishing line.

And this despite a promise
from the United States

that Soviet troops would have the honor

of entering the German capital alone,

reward for the great sacrifices
made in the previous months.

In April, the Allies
conquered northern Italy.

On April the 28th, a few
days before the capitulation,

Il Duce paid for his alliance
with Hitler with his life.

He was summarily executed by partisans,

along with his mistress and a
handful of loyal supporters.

Their bodies were put on display in Milan

and given over to popular anger.

Throughout liberated Europe,

so-called wild purges broke out.

Lynches, public shaming,

and settling of scores
came as brutal revenge

against real or supposed collaborators.

After a period of intensive shelling,

the first Soviet divisions
entered Berlin on April the 21st.

The Fuhrer finally gave into despair,

causing disarray among his entourage.

Goring claimed total command of the Reich.

Himmler told the British
and Americans he was willing

to negotiate Germany's
surrender with them.

They were both disavowed by Hitler,

who remained as a recluse inside
his bunker until the fall.

On April the 30th,

he committed suicide with
a bullet to his temple,

having bitten into a cyanide pill

like his mistress, Ava
Brown, the Goebbels couple,

and their six children.

Victims of the Nazi
regime's propaganda machine,

hundreds of Germans, women,
the elderly, whole families,

preferred to join their Fuhrer in death

rather than witness the fall of the Reich.

Berlin surrendered to the Soviets

in what had once been
Hitler's majestic capital,

the German parliament
building, the Reichstag,

was once again in flames.

At its summit, three Soviet soldiers,

one wearing wristwatches, maybe
stolen from German corpses.

Nazi Germany was no more.

On May the 8th, Germany's
surrender was celebrated

in every big city in the western world.

President Roosevelt, who
had died a month earlier,

never saw his triumph,

but grief for their president
didn't stop Americans

from celebrating victory.

2 million New Yorkers
gathered on the streets

around Times Square.

In London, millions
joined in street parties,

singing and dancing and
burning Hitler effigies.

In Paris, a huge parade was
held on the Champs-Elysees,

civilians mixed with
soldiers and prisoners of war

and a few rare deportees
rescued from the Nazi camps.

Allied soldiers liberated
the camps one by one.

Germans who continued to deny
their existence were forced

to face the reality they
had chosen not to see.

The mass graves,

the gas chambers, the ovens,

and piles of thousands of bodies

that the Nazis didn't
have time to process.

A crime so unnameable

that justice would invent a new
term to condemn its authors,

a crime against humanity.

As organizers or accomplices

in a common plan or conspiracy
commit crimes against peace,

war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Slobodan Milosevic
faces three trials in one

for war crimes in the Croatian, Bosnian,

and Kosovo conflict of the '90s.

At the White House,

Harry Truman had replaced
Franklin Roosevelt.

The determination of the Japanese
was still of great concern

to the Americans.

They were about to take
an irreversible decision.

In the desert of New Mexico,

the atomic bomb had become reality.

On July the 26th,

the US, the UK, and China
signed the Potsdam Declaration,

demanding Japan's unconditional surrender.

In case of refusal,

they promised prompt
and utter destruction.

Washington interpreted Japan's
delayed response as a refusal

and gave the order to use the atomic bomb.

In the upper echelons of American power,

the A-bomb was not only a
means of obtaining victory,

but also of imposing American
supremacy on the world.

The Soviets had already
infiltrated the team

of scientists behind the bomb,

and soon they too would
become a nuclear power,

plunging the world into fear.

On August the 6th, 1945,

teacher Ogura Toyofumi looked skywards.

A flash of white ripped
through the sky, blinding him.

As the bomber, Enola Gay, flew away,

it was violently shaken by the shockwave.

Its copilot, Robert A.
Lewis, wrote in his log,

"My God, what have we done?"

In a fraction of a second,
Hiroshima ceased to exist.

70,000 people died on the day itself.

Tens of thousands of
others would follow them

in the weeks, months, and years to come.

Three days later, at 11:58 AM,

the United States sent its second warning.

This time, the city of
Nagasaki was wiped off the map.

Humankind had just
entered the nuclear age.

Fear of the bomb would
become a structuring feature

of international relations,

leading to an arms race of a new kind

and a permanent threat
in case of conflict.

On hearing the news, Stalin was furious.

To his mind, the Americans
had triggered the apocalypse

to dispense with his support.

Since the defeat of Germany,

tensions between the
Allies had been mounting.

Regardless of the promises made by Russia,

communist regimes with increasing
power had been installed

in Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria.

Stalin had no intention of stopping there.

For fear of being denied victory,

on the night of August the 8th, 1945,

he ordered his troops into Manchuria,

still under Japanese occupation.

Surrounded on all sides,
Japan laid down its arms.

Three months after the defeat of Germany,

Emperor Hirohito announced
his country's surrender.

World War II was finally over,

but the price of peace was staggering.

In Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
humankind had taken a path

on which there was no turning back.

After six years of horror,

humankind stood together
to celebrate victory.

In New York, photojournalist
Alfred Eisenstaedt crisscrossed

Times Square.

All around him, a euphoric crowd partied

on hearing of Japan's surrender.

In this human tide,

a uniformed sailor enthusiastically
kissed a young nurse,

an iconic photo that symbolized
shared hope in the future.

With its long list of
losses and destruction,

war gave way to a world
desperate to live once more.

Driven by the dream of a
peaceful and prosperous life,

the baby boom produced the generation

that built the world of today.

War destroyed everything, but
also gave rise to a new world.

As the generation

that lived through World
War II gradually leaves us,

its memory survives in
pictures and writings.

A shockwave whose tremors
are still felt today

and a reminder that
peace is always fragile.