All language subtitles for World.War.II.with.Tom.Hanks.S01E16.Resistance.720p.eng.sdh

[foreboding music]

- By the summer of 1944,

the terror and tyranny
of the Nazi Third Reich

shrouds most of Europe.

Occupied countries
resist as they can.

But with the advance of
Soviet forces in the east

and the success of the
Normandy invasion in the west,

two of the world's great cities

organize in force
and fight back.

Even in the place of greatest
horror, there is resistance.

- All wars change the world,

but none of them
changed the world

like the Second World War did.

- Japan's on the march,

Germany's on the march.

- No one can imagine
the nightmare

they're about to unleash.

The most destructive
war in human history.

- Suddenly, the world
is turned upside down

and all hell is let loose.

- The West is stunned by
the speed of the advance.

- You get the Allies
led by the big three:

Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin.

Men who are dealing with
immensely complicated questions.

- It's the biggest military
operation of human history.

- The Allies have
to come together,

not just militarily,
but industrial scale.

It's a global perspective.

- They have to fight in
every climate

from the Arctic to the
jungles of the Pacific,

to the deserts of Africa
and the depths of the ocean.

[dramatic music]

- But there was no
certainty of victory.

It was going to be a
horrific bloodbath.

- We see humans at
their absolute worst,

how they treat
other human beings,

and we see them at
their absolute best,

willing to give their lives
that others might live.

- World War II was a struggle

in which there could
be one victor

and one vanquished.

[dramatic music]

[sirens wail]

[dramatic music]

[broadcaster speaks French]

- [Tom] Since the
fall of France,

the BBC has broadcast

daily radio programming
to occupied Europe.

Embedded within the
broadcasts are coded messages.

[broadcaster speaks French]

- [Tom] The night before D-Day,

the Allied invasion
of Western Europe,

the broadcast to occupied France

includes a line from a
poem by Paul Verlaine.

[broadcaster speaks French]

- The French
resistance is waiting,

and when the BBC announces:

"Wound my heart with
a monotonous languor,"

this is the word that they
have been waiting to hear.

The invasion is on.

- The Allies want that
resistance movement to rise up,

to blow up German railroads,

to ambush German patrols,

and to disrupt the Germans
in any way they can.

- [Col. Douds] All of their
planning,

all of their networking
now goes into action

to slow the German response

so that the Allies
can win the race

to build up and break out.

- [Tom] So many men and
women throughout France

have risked so much
to get to this night

and the beginning of their
country's liberation.

- [Robert] After the fall
of France in 1940,

there are two Frances.

There's the France

that is directly occupied by
the Germans, including Paris,

and there is a puppet regime
with its capital at Vichy.

So resistance groups
form in each one.

- [Tom] From the start,

the inspiration for French
resistance to Germany

was embodied by one man.

A veteran of the Great War,
General Charles De Gaulle.

- [Col. Douds] Charles De Gaulle
fought all the way through

the German invasion
of France in 1940.

- Rather than surrender
to the Germans,

rather than go along with
the French government,

he arrives in Britain by
himself and just says,

"By the way, I'm now the
leader of the Free French."

He's self-appointed.

Churchill goes, "Eh,
he might be useful."

He gives him an office,
gives him a radio,

lets him do some broadcasts.

[Charles speaks French]

- [Col. Douds] He's gonna
announce:

"The Vichy government
is illegitimate."

"Anybody who's in France
should come over to England,

and we're gonna start
to put together an army

that's gonna
liberate ourselves.

If you can't get here,

you should start resisting
while you're there."

- [Robert] This is an extremely
important event

in galvanizing
the French people.

Up to that point, they'd been
in a state of despondency

at the rapid defeat at
the hands of the Germans.

Now, here was a voice, one of
their own, offering them hope.

He says, "The flame
of French resistance

"Must not be extinguished

and will not be extinguished."

These are words

that French men and women
were longing to hear.

It's not only the beginning
of the resistance,

it's the beginning of the
rise of Charles De Gaulle

to political power in France.

- Resistance pops up
all over the country.

But these groups
aren't connected,

and they all stand
for different things.

- [Dan S.] There are
aristocratic Catholics,

Communists, or Republicans.

There are all different groups

jockeying for position
between themselves

and fighting against
the Germans as well.

- [Tom] A cross-section
of French citizens,

teachers, lawyers,
farmers, factory workers,

take part in the resistance.

Women play a substantial role.

- [Robert] One of the most
important activities

of the resistance

was a network of agents and
secret codes and safe houses

that helped smuggle
downed Allied flyers

out of France and back
to safety in Britain.

This underground railroad

helped about 5,000 Allied
flyers make it to freedom

in the course of the war.

- [Col. Douds] It's the
potential of the Allied invasion

eventually reaching France

that cause volunteers to
flock to the resistance.

They're gathering
equipment, supplies, weapons

because they think:
"Eventually, we will be freed.

How do we help
accelerate that?"

[broadcaster speaks French]

- [Tom] The night before D-Day,

dozens of Allied agents are
dropped behind German lines

to coordinate with groups
of the French resistance,

so-called Jedburgh teams.

- [Robert] Three-man teams

who parachute into occupied
France:

an American, a British,
and a French agent.

- [Rebecca] They bring weapons
with them.

They'd bring a radio set
so they could communicate.

- [Robert] They coordinate
activities,

and they inform the groups
what the Allies are up to.

The Jedburghs have
an ultimate goal,

and that is to ease

the invasion plan for
June, 1944.

[dramatic music]

Once the Allies
land in June 6th,

the resistance
becomes emboldened.

- [Tom] But many pay a grievous
price for their courage.

Germans, with the help
of French collaborators,

hunt down anyone
assisting the Allies.

- [Col. Douds] The costs of
being in the resistance

or around the resistance
are incredibly high.

They could be arrested
and put in jail,

they could be sent
to a labor camp,

hung oftentimes without
trial and in public

as a deterrence
to everyone else.

- [Robert] The Gestapo
carryout reprisals.

"For every one of
our soldiers killed,

we will kill 50
resistance fighters."

- [Tom] Four days
after the invasion,

near the village of
Oradour-sur-Glane,

the local resistance kills
an SS battalion commander.

Nazi retribution is
swift and merciless.

- [Col. Douds] They take
all the men

and they shove them into a
bunch of barns, shoot them,

and set the barns on fire.

They take all the
women and children

and put them in a church

and then burn the
church to the ground,

shooting anyone who
tries to climb out.

Collective vengeance for
the act of resistance.

- [Tom] On July 25th,

the Americans launch a
massive air and ground attack:

Operation Cobra.

After a month and
a half of combat

among the hedge
rows of Normandy,

the Allies now break through
the German defensive perimeter.

- [Dan S.] Paris is the center
of the German occupying force.

But the Allies were not
super interested in Paris.

- Cities are an enormous
military problem.

Do you go into Paris

knowing that you could end
up fighting an urban battle

that you don't want to fight?

The streets narrow your
ability to maneuver.

So fighting inside a city

is nobody's idea of
what you want to do.

Of course, if you're French,

the situation is
completely different.

- The French people are
thinking that the Allies are

just a few hundred kilometers
from the city of Paris,

and they believe that
Paris will be next

in the great capitals of
Europe to be liberated

from Nazi fascism.

- [Michael] To the French,

Paris is not just the
capital of France.

It is the most important,
most symbolic city

that you're going to liberate.

And the man who thinks
he's going to take control

of all of this is
Charles De Gaulle.

- [Dan S.] Throughout the war,
he builds up Free French forces

in London and in Africa.

French soldiers
flock to his colors.

And, by D-Day,

he has something of a
Free French armed force.

And De Gaulle is astonished
and appalled to hear

that the Allies are
not focusing on Paris

as a key objective.

Paris is like the

beating heart of the French
republic.

There is no France
without Paris.

And De Gaulle said, "If
you're not going, I'm going."

[engines whir]

- [Tom] Allied forces
advance across France

to force the Wehrmacht's
retreat to the Rhine and beyond.

Liberating Paris from
German occupation

is not their main
strategic concern.

But Parisians have other ideas.

- [Michael] The problem for
Paris is that,

when the Normandy invasion
happens,

it cuts the city off from
its principal food supply.

And the Germans
are trying to take

everything that they
can out of the city.

So it's a very, very
unstable, very insecure place.

- And so there is the beginnings

of popular uprising in Paris.

A lot of that is being driven
by the communist resistance.

De Gaulle is quite
keen to get to Paris

because what he doesn't is
Paris to become liberated

by the communist resistance.

He does not want
to liberate France

only for it to fall into
the hands of communism.

- [Tom] To ensure that
French troops liberate Paris,

General De Gaulle
requires the support

of the Supreme Allied Commander:
General Dwight Eisenhower.

- [Michael] De Gaulle didn't
have that many cards

to play in 1944,

but he played them as
skillfully as anybody.

There is a French unit, the
Second Armored Division,

controlled by General
Philippe Leclerc,

that has been disobeying
American orders

to get closer and closer
and closer to the city

so that it could go
into Paris if it had to.

- And so De Gaulle became
very aggressive about

steering the Second Armored
Division toward the city.

He gave General Leclerc
specific instructions

to, "No matter what
these Americans tell you,

I need you to get to Paris."

- [Col. Douds] As Winston
Churchill would say,

he tends to love to bite
the hand that feeds him.

You have to give
him credit, though,

for he has his eye on one thing,

and that's a free France.

[dramatic music]

[artillery fires]

- [Tom] Shortly after D-Day,

in coordination with
their Western allies,

the Soviets throw the
massed might of the Red Army

against the Germans.

- Operation Bagration is the
gigantic Soviet offensive

in summer of 1944.

Roughly timed to coincide

with the Allies
landing in Normandy.

- [Dan S.] It is just a
monstrous offensive.

About two and a half million
Soviets are thrown into battle.

Half a million Germans are
killed, wounded, or captured.

- [Robert] It erased an entire
German army group from the map,

the entire central portion of
the German front in the east.

- Now the Soviet army
is moving into Poland,

and you've gotta
remember that, of course,

Poland was the reason
the war started.

- [Tom] In the fall of 1939,

Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin
agreed to divide Poland.

- [Simon] When Hitler took
Poland,

he treated it like the
laboratory

for his racial ideas,

his plans to annihilate
the Jewish people

and to treat the
Eastern Slavic people

as essentially a slave
race to work to death.

Poland has been stained
in blood and killing,

crushed beneath the
German jackboot,

its soil watered with the blood

of vast numbers of
its Jewish community.

- [Dan S.] The Poles have been

living through hell for five
years.

If you're a resident of Warsaw,

you are one of the most unlucky
people ever to have lived.

Throughout this horror show

that has been inflicted
upon the Poles,

they have maintained
a shadow government,

a kind of national cohesion.

They have a
government-in-exile in London,

and that is sending
orders

to a home army, a sort of
secret army

of underground resistance
fighters in Poland.

- The Polish Home
Army was formed

really immediately after
the Germans invaded.

There was a real sense in
amongst the Polish community

and especially the young
people: "We're gonna fight."

It was always set up as a
formal military organization.

It wasn't just an
ad hoc bunch of partisans.

They undertook intelligence
gatherings of troop movements.

They gathered information

about the camps, about
Auschwitz, and others.

- [Tom] The Home Army is led
by a former cavalry officer

who has been fighting
the Germans since 1939.

General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski.

[tanks rattle]

On July 29th, 1944,

as the Allies are
slicing through France,

the Soviets reach the
outskirts of Warsaw.

[guns fire]

- [Simon] The Polish Home Army
is waiting for the moment

when the Germans
are about to retreat

and just before
the Soviets arrive.

Because that is the opportunity

to reassert Polish
independence, the Polish state.

- [Alexandra] They wanted to
prove to the world

that they stood
on their own feet

and that they fought to
liberate their own country.

They don't want to give
up the Nazi dictatorship

and just have it replaced
with a Soviet dictatorship.

- [Tom] The Polish Home Army
and General Bór-Komorowski

have long planned
for this moment.

- [Dan S.] There are weapons
caches, command structures.

There are instructions

coming from senior
officers based in London.

There is a plan.

- [Alexandra] Tens of thousands
of Home Army troops

will go all over the city

and go for the most
important things:

the airports, the bridges,

the main focal
points of Nazi power.

- [Simon] It was a moment where
timing was everything.

If they did it too soon, the
Germans would crush them.

If they did it too late, the
Soviets would conquer them.

[guns fire]

- [Alexandra] The Red Army was
coming.

It looked as if there
was just this juggernaut

that was gonna force the
Germans out of the city.

- [Tom] Outside Warsaw,

the Germans regroup on the
banks of the Vistula River.

- [Alexandra] The Poles hear the
sounds of fighting,

think the Red Army's gonna win,

and they're about
to come into Warsaw.

- [Tom] General
Bór-Komorowski gives the order

to begin the uprising.

- [Tom] The Poles have
been resisting the Germans

for almost five years.

Now, with the Soviets on the
other side of the Vistula,

the Polish Home Army
seizes its opportunity.

- Because of the Red
Army coming so quickly

up to the gates of Warsaw,

General Bór-Komorowski
gives the order

to start the uprising.

- [Simon] The Polish Home Army
think this is the right moment.

The Russians are approaching,

the Germans are clearly
preparing to evacuate,

and the Poles appear
out of the sewers,

out of the backstreets,
out of the cellars,

and they raise the
flag of rebellion.

- [Alexandra] Civilians are
thrilled, they're jubilant.

For the first time since 1939,

they can sing the
national anthem.

They push trams over,
they build barricades,

and they make it
very, very difficult

for the Germans to fight there.

- [Simon] It's a heroic
moment, an exciting moment.

Poland is rising like a
phoenix out of the ashes.

- [Dan S.] But the attack does
not go as well as it was hoped.

They do manage to
seize the post office,

they manage to seize an
important German arsenal,

but they don't manage
to secure the airport.

So it's up for grabs
by the end of that day.

You get this sort
of twisted patchwork

of Polish and German control,

which ensures that
there is gonna be

the mother of all street fights.

[guns fire]

- [Tom] The Polish Home Army

expected the Germans
controlling Warsaw

to be in retreat.

[gun fires]

Instead, the Wehrmacht attacks
the Red Army at the Vistula

and retains their
grip on Warsaw.

Adolf Hitler meets
with Heinrich Himmler,

head of the Nazi SS.

- [Alexandra] On the night of
the 1st of August, 1944,

Himmler goes up to the
Wolfsschanze, he sees Hitler,

and Hitler's raging around.

And Himmler goes, "You
know, Mein Fuhrer,

let's use this as a moment

to erase Warsaw from the map.

Because this wretched
city has stood in our way

of German expansion to the
East for hundreds of years.

So let's just do it."

So that evening,

they give what's called
the Order for Warsaw.

- The Germans have a plan

to wipe Poland literally
from the face of the Earth.

One, you wanna send a
message to everybody else

that this is the
cost of defying me.

But the other reason is
you want to destroy Poland

as a national identity.

- [Alexandra] Every combatant
is to be killed.

All men and women and children,
civilians are to be killed.

And then the city
is to be looted,

and then, glattrasiert, that
means razed to the ground.

[missiles fire]

- [Simon] The Germans poured
in ruthless shock troops

with the express purpose
of destroying them.

The Home Army used up their
caches of weapons very fast.

[artillery fires]

- [Anand] The Poles think
the Red Army is coming.

The whole thing
depended upon the idea

that Germans were either leaving

or could not reinforce their
existing troops within Warsaw.

Neither of those two things
turned out to be true.

The Germans weren't leaving
and the Soviets weren't coming.

- [Simon] Stalin says, to
everyone's surprise:

"Halt the army."

They can see across the
river Warsaw is burning.

- [Robert] Although the Soviets
are right across the river,

they make no effort to
support the resistance

in its uprising
against the Germans.

Rather, they sit
across the river

and watch the Germans
crush the uprising.

- [Dan S.] Stalin doesn't
just do nothing.

He actively interferes
with the Allies' attempt

to help the Home Army,
the Polish uprising.

- [Tom] From their
air bases in Italy,

the British and Americans try
to drop supplies to the Poles.

- [Dan S.] Churchill asks
permission:

"Can Allied planes
carrying supplies

use Soviet bases to refuel
and carry out repairs?"

Stalin says no.

- [Simon] Stalin has always
hated

the Polish government in London,

which he regards as bourgeois,
imperialist, capitalist.

He has a small Polish
communist group.

He is always planning

to parachute them into
Poland as his government.

- [Alexandra] And so Stalin is
content to watch the Germans

utterly destroy the
Polish Home Army,

destroy the
population of Warsaw,

and destroy the city itself.

- [Simon] Stalin wants to
conquer Poland,

but he wants to make sure

that it's then turned into a
communist vassal client state.

He wants to wait

until the Nazis have destroyed
the Polish underground

before he enters Warsaw.

Let them do his work for him.

Hitler sends in his
most psychopathic crews

of murderous, grotesque sadists.

- [Alexandra] Some of them are
the most brutal murderers

of the entire Nazi regime.

Like Oskar Dirlewanger.

Even the SS doesn't
wanna work with him.

They go through
building after building,

then they round these
people up by the thousands

and then mow those people down.

When 5,000, 6,000
bodies are lying there,

then they bring in the
verbrennungskommando,

these burning commandos,
to burn the bodies,

specialists from
places like Treblinka

who've now become specialists
at burning human flesh.

They loot the entire city
and then they destroy it.

Building by building,
libraries, museums,

everything is destroyed.

[dramatic music]

- [Tom] The Polish
Home Army surrenders.

General Bór-Komorowski is
imprisoned by the Nazis.

- [Alexandra] By the end of the
Warsaw Uprising,

about 200,000 civilians
have been killed.

Then the remaining population

are sent to camps
like Auschwitz.

Some are sent as slave
laborers into the Reich.

So the destruction of Warsaw

is unique in the
destruction of cities

in the Second World
War in Europe.

- [Dan S.] In Warsaw,
tragically,

the Germans chose
to meet that desire

for Polish independence
with overwhelming force.

To kill and smash

and eradicate Polish culture.

To say, "No, you will
not liberate yourselves.

In fact, you have
condemned yourselves."

[soft plaintive music]

[dramatic music]

- [Tom] August, 1944.

The Germans are in full
retreat across France.

They begin to evacuate Paris.

Parisians sense a chance
to recapture their city.

But they need a spark.

- [Marco] On the 15th of August,

the Parisian police,
which was 20,000 strong

and had been collaborating
with the Germans

up to that moment,

actually switches sides
and raises the flag

on their building,

giving the sign to
the rest of the city

and of course to the partisans

that this was the moment the
uprising needed to start.

[guns fire]

And so the streets of
Paris become a battlefield.

[guns fire]

The French resistance has
been preparing for this moment

for a very long time.

[dramatic music]

And they act against the
Germans quite rapidly

and quite successfully.

- [Col. Douds] As this happened,
Charles De Gaulle shows up

to Supreme Allied Commander
Eisenhower's headquarters

and go, "We have
to march on Paris."

- [Michael] The Allies don't
particularly like De Gaulle

but see De Gaulle as a
bulwark against communism.

- [Dan S.] Eisenhower is
smart enough to know

that it would look
really, really good

if the first troops to enter
Paris were the Free French.

- [Marco] Eisenhower decides
to allow the Free French forces

to send one division
into the city

and to help the insurgents
to free the city.

- [Tom] Supported by the
American Fourth Division,

General De Gaulle orders

the French Second Armored
Division into Paris.

- [Martin] Toward the bitter
end,

Adolf Hitler issues instructions
to General von Choltitz,

who was in control of
Paris, to destroy the city.

Hitler, during a phone
call with von Choltitz,

asks: "Is Paris burning?"

And von Choltitz tells him:

"Yes, my Fuhrer, we
burned the city."

[dramatic music]

- [Tom] Instead, he
negotiates a surrender.

[triumphant music]

- [Dan S.] It is the officers
and men

of that Second French
Armored Division

who first enter Paris.

[triumphant music]

So De Gaulle can claim

that the French have
liberated their own capital.

And not just any old French,

not the communist
French, not the resis...

His French army.

[triumphant music]

- [Marco] He is the one
leading the parade

through the streets of Paris,
presenting himself

as the legitimate leader

of the French government.

[triumphant music]

- [Martin] Everyone in the
city has come out now

because they feel

that their moment of
liberation is on them.

[guns fire]
[citizens scream]

- [Tom] But there are still
German soldiers in Paris.

[guns fire]
[foreboding music]

- [Broadcaster] General De
Gaulle walked straight ahead

into what appeared to
me to be a hail of fire.

But he went straight
ahead without hesitation,

his shoulders flung back.

[guns fire]

- [Tom] Most Germans
have surrendered or fled.

The last are tracked down,

along with French collaborators.

[crowd cheers]

[Charles speaks French]

[Charles speaks French]

- [Marco] He presents the
liberation of Paris

as a story of self-liberation,

a Paris that was
able to free itself

from the yoke of the
German occupation

without the help of the Allies.

[Charles speaks French]

- [Marco] However, let's say the
Allied presence in the region

also played a major role

in convincing the Germans
that it was time to go.

- [Michael] France will enter
this post-war period

with pride and with confidence.

It's difficult to imagine
how that would've happened

if not for the efforts of
all of the resistance groups

that fought against
Nazi aggression.

[crowd applauds]

- [Tom] But, in Warsaw,
the outcome is different.

The city is razed by the Nazis.

And what remains is captured
and controlled by the Soviets.

[dramatic music]

Paris, the city of
light, is saved.

Warsaw and the hope of the
Polish people is destroyed.

[soft plaintive music]

- [Alexandra] Resistance is
important

for the people of a nation

who do not want
to be subjugated.

While the French and the Poles
rise up against the Germans

within the extermination
camps at Auschwitz and others,

there is also this
spirit of resistance.

[soft plaintive music]

- [Tom] The deliberate
killing of Jews by the Nazis

began with bullets.

Shortly after the Germans

invaded the Soviet
Union in June, 1941,

they started to shoot Jewish
children, women, and men,

and bury them in
ravines and forests.

But eventually the Nazis

required a more systematic
method of murder.

- There were tens of
thousands of the camps

by the end of the war.

It's a huge infrastructure.

But there were a very
small number of death camps

within this enormous system.

Six death camps.

Chelmno, which is the
original death camp,

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka,

and then Auschwitz-Birkenau
and Majdanek.

- [Tom] As the Red Army
pushes into Poland,

the Nazis attempt to
hide their great crime

by dismantling the
killing centers.

- [James] They destroyed
documents.

They destroyed the
major death camps

at Belzec, Sobibor,
and Treblinka.

They get rid of the vast
majority of the buildings.

They cover them over.

They create
farmhouses on the site

to conceal everything
that they've done.

And then as the camps
come into the path

of invading Allied armies,
they evacuate them.

[dramatic music]

- [Tom] At Auschwitz-Birkenau,
there are prisoners

determined to document
the Nazi murders.

- [Alexandra] The extermination
camp system

includes the sorting of people.

Some of them are left
alive because they looked

as if they were young or
fit or healthy enough.

Those people work in something
called a sonderkommando.

They are supposed to
sort the clothing,

sort the hair that's
been cut off people,

to move the corpses,

all these terrible, terrible
jobs that they're given.

- [James] In 1944 in
Auschwitz-Birkenau,

members of the
resistance movement

managed to smuggle a
camera into the camp.

The sonderkommando,

who were witnessing
all of these things

on a day-to-day basis,

secure this camera,

and their ambition is to
use this camera to record

images of what's
happening within the camp

in order for those pictures
to stir the world to respond.

- [Tom] One prisoner manages
to photograph the horror.

[clock ticks]

[foreboding music]

Four images of hell.

- [James] The really
extraordinary thing about them

is that the images
themselves are framed

from within the doorway of the
gas chamber building itself.

So the images testify
to the bravery

of what this man was doing

and the appalling depravity
of the process at that stage.

And what we see
within these images

are the burning of bodies
outside the crematoria.

And we see people
being undressed,

waiting to be brought
into the gas chamber.

[foreboding music]

- [Alexandra] The film is put
into a tube of toothpaste

and then smuggled out
to the Polish Home Army.

This is perhaps the
single most valuable

photographic evidence to
emerge from Auschwitz.

[foreboding music]

- The Jews fought back from
1933 to the end of the war.

There are escapes.

There are individual killings
of guards by prisoners.

The Jews are fighting
back this entire time.

Resistance is what
gives us testimony

of what happened
in those places.

[dramatic music]

- [Tom] In the fall of 1944,

Nazi Germany is retreating
on all fronts except one:

their war against the Jews.

Auschwitz-Birkenau
is now the frontline.

- [Rebecca] Killing Jews is not
a secondary byproduct

of their military goals.

It is their military goal.

- [James] From Hitler's
perspective,

it's worth apportioning
resources to it

despite what's
happening elsewhere.

In fact, they accelerate
the process of mass murder.

- [Alexandra] In 1944, the Nazis
decide to exterminate

the Hungarian Jewish population.

So a special train line is
built into Auschwitz-Birkenau,

and hundreds of thousands of
Hungarian Jews are rounded up,

and many of them are murdered

within a few hours of
their arriving at the camp.

- [James] 1944 is when Auschwitz
hits its

terrible, appalling peak

in terms of the number
of people killed.

[foreboding music]

- [Rebecca] Requests start to
come to the U.S. government

to bomb either the rail lines,

the gas chambers at
Auschwitz, the crematoria,

the bridges leading
to these camps.

- [Michael] The idea of
bombing death camps

is difficult operationally
and it's difficult morally.

You're going to
kill the very people

that you're trying to rescue.

- [James] Churchill and
Roosevelt's perspective:

humanitarian concerns

were always secondary
to winning the war.

They would say:

"The best thing that we can do

to help these people

is to bring the war to an
end as quickly as possible."

- [Tom] Prisoners at
Auschwitz-Birkenau

cannot afford to wait
for the war to end.

They want to survive,
they want to escape,

and they want to
stop the killing.

[foreboding music]

- [Tom] From the beginning,

there has been an
underground of resistance

at Auschwitz-Birkenau

made up of various
groups of prisoners,

including the Sonderkommando.

- The Sonderkommando
starts to realize

that there are fewer and fewer

of these transports
coming from Hungary.

"The extermination process is
finishing, our time is coming,

and if we don't act quickly,
we're going to be killed."

- [James] So they started to
look at ways they could resist.

They might die trying,

there's a very good chance
that they'll die trying,

but at least they can
give themselves a chance.

Because they're determined
to do whatever they can

to meet the moment
on their own terms.

- [Rebecca] Auschwitz is a
death camp,

and it's also a
forced labor facility.

And so there were women

who were working in
the armaments factories

nearby Auschwitz

who had access to gunpowder.

- [Tom] One member
of the underground

is part of a slave labor unit

that sorts the clothing
of the dead: Roza Robota.

She makes contact with
the Sonderkommando.

They form a plan to
destroy the crematoria,

provoke a wider uprising,
and attempt to escape.

Robota enlists Jewish women
working in the munitions factory

to smuggle gunpowder:

Ala Gertner, Regina Safirsztajn,
and Esther Wajcblum.

- [James] So they secured these
explosives at enormous risk,

and they're smuggling
them through

various kind of ingenious means.

They create little packets of
fabric that they hide them in,

and they get them through.

- [Rebecca] The women are
collecting the gunpowder

to hand them off to
their friend Roza.

She is going to
get the gunpowder

into the hands of
the Sonderkommando,

who are going to use
it to try to blow up

the crematoria where
they're working.

- [James] At a certain
moment,

an individual takes
an improvised weapon

and launches at a
member of the SS,

and that kickstarts
the whole thing.

[guns fire]

There's smoke, there's
noise, there's shouting,

and there's gunfire.

[bomb explodes]

- [Alexandra] The resistors
end up blowing up, in part,

one of the crematoria,
Crematoria IV.

- [James] It's put
permanently out of commission.

So the Sonderkommando

would've considered
that to be a a success.

And in another
crematory building,

the Sonderkommando
force some the guards

into one of the ovens alive.

- [Tom] Some prisoners escape

but are quickly
caught and executed.

- [Alexandra] The three women
who have been

stealing the gunpowder

plus Roza Robota
are to be hanged.

And just as the noose
is put around her neck,

she yells out to the group
of prisoners assembled:

"Vengeance," or,
"Sisters, avenge."

It is a passionate message

of resilience, resistance,
and continue the fight.

- [Tom] In December,

the Red Army advances
on Auschwitz-Birkenau.

[foreboding music]

The SS forced prisoners
on marches into Germany.

Thousands die.

[foreboding music]

On January 27th, 1945,

Soviet soldiers arrive at the
gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

- [James] Auschwitz really
became the center

of the mass murder of Europe's
Jews quite late in the war.

The important thing to know

is that 80% of the Jews
murdered in the Holocaust

were not murdered at Auschwitz,

but elsewhere in places

that are either forgotten
or largely overlooked.

[foreboding music]

- [Tom] The Nazis and
their collaborators

murder six million
Jews during the war.

Millions of others
die at their hands.

But in the face of
unimaginable conditions

and inconceivable cruelty,

some find a way to resist.

- [Rebecca] Resistance takes
so many forms.

There's armed
resistance and uprising,

and that happens
throughout Europe.

There is spiritual resistance.

Just the idea that you
are not going to die

just because the
Nazis want you to,

you are going to try to survive.

You are going to document what
is happening, write letters,

write diaries, bury
them in the ground

so that someday we will be able

to talk about what
you went through.

- [Robert] The nature of tyranny

becomes evident in World War II.

The Nazis and the
Japanese imperialists

are invading their neighbors,

kidnapping, slave laborers,

murdering those who
disagree with them.

It was a natural reaction

on the part of the
occupied peoples

to organize some
form of resistance.

And it happens all over
the world in World War II.

- After surviving
Auschwitz and Buchenwald,

Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel said:

"We must always take sides.

Neutrality helps the
oppressor, never the victim.

Silence encourages the
tormentor, never the tormented.

Sometimes we must interfere."

In the Pacific, President
Franklin Roosevelt,

General Douglas MacArthur,
and Admiral Chester Nimitz

meet in Pearl Harbor
to draw a plan

for the final defeat
of Imperial Japan.