All language subtitles for World War II S01 E18_en

(tense music)

- Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party

have dominated the hearts and minds

of the German people
for over a decade.

But by the summer of 1944,
the Soviet Red Army

and the forces of the Western allies

are tightening their vice grip
on Hitler's Third Reich.

The Nazi's complete
control is about to crack.

ROBERT: All wars change the world,

but none of them changed the world
like the Second World War did.

MAN: 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.

JON: 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.

ALEXANDRA:
The Allies have to come together

not just militarily,
but industrial scale.

It's a global perspective.

MAN: 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.

- 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.

JON: World War II was a struggle
in which there could be

one victor and one vanquished.

(explosion rumbles)

(siren wails)

REPORTER: The biggest
story in Western Europe today

is the attempted
assassination of Hitler.

For the second time
since this war began,

an assassin has almost
succeeded in killing the Fuhrer

and perhaps changing
the course of history.

(tense music)

TOM: July 20th, 1944.

A bomb hidden in a briefcase
explodes at the Wolf's Lair,

Adolf Hitler's
military headquarters.

It was the opening move
in an elaborate plan

to kill the Nazi leader
and overthrow his government.

Hitler is wounded but survives,

and the plot fails.

(Adolf Hitler speaking German)

ROBERT:
Surviving the July 20th bombing

convinces Hitler
beyond a shadow of a doubt

that he has been chosen by heaven

or by providence
to lead the German people.

DAN:
He's on all sorts of medications.

He's under more pressure than
most human beings can imagine.

JAMES: He becomes even more
paranoid than he already has been.

He is micromanaging even more.

Nazis take over
armaments production.

(crowd chatter indistinctly)

TOM: Hitler and the Nazis
mobilise even more men

and tighten their grip
on Germany and its people.

(crowd chatter indistinctly)

PETER:
There is no difference anymore

between the fate of the
public and the German people

and the fate of the Nazi state.

The thing is, the German public

is not too happy
about how the war goes on.

They are aware that
Germany may lose the war,

but they think the only
person who can bring

this to a close is Hitler himself.

TOM: As summer turns to fall,

Germany's strategic
situation deteriorates...

...and every German is aware

that the allies demand
unconditional surrender.

JAMES: Hitler knows
that that's an impossibility.

Surrender means humiliation,

being betrayed, ultimately executed.

ROBERT: Hitler also knows
something about warfare.

A passive defence never works.

You have to show your adversaries
that you're still dangerous.

Hitler quotes Frederick the Great,

who was in a similar war
in the 18th century.

Frederick famously said,
"We're gonna fight this war

till one of our goddamn
enemies gets tired."

MARTIN: Hitler wants to come up
with some Hail Mary.

He wants to come up with some plan
that will bring advantage back

to a heavily
disadvantaged situation.

TOM: In September,
Hitler summons his generals

to the Wolf's Lair.

He outlines a plan
that will return his troops

to the scene
of his greatest triumph,

the Ardennes.

ROBERT:
The Ardennes Offensive of 1944

is going to involve
multiple German armies

across 100 miles of front.

They're going to crash through
what they have identified

as a weakly held portion
of the American line.

They're going to drive
through the Ardennes Forest,

scene of the great victory of 1940,

and if all goes well,
cross the Meuse River,

and from there, make it to Antwerp.

Antwerp is the major supply port

for the entire
allied force in Europe.

If the Germans take Antwerp,

it will be a catastrophe
of unimaginable proportions.

(intense music)

GEOFFREY: Hitler sees this
as a way to divide the coalition,

demoralise the coalition,

and force the coalition
to make separate peaces with him.

TOM: But Hitler
will have to strip whole divisions

from his Eastern front
to execute his gambit in the West.

ROBERT: Not all of Hitler's
generals are on board.

They just don't believe that
given their current force levels

that they can blast across
the West European continent

and take the major city of Antwerp.

Field Marshall Gerd von Rundstedt
says "Antwerp, my God,

if we even get to the Meuse River,"
that's less than halfway,

"we should get down
on our knees and thank God."

GEOFFREY: But Hitler,
by this stage of the war,

he doesn't really trust
very many of his generals,

and he does have
this belief in luck.

He's gotten lucky at various
points throughout this war,

and he might be lucky
again this time.

So he decides to roll the dice.

MARTIN: Hitler will even
eventually say that,

"If this doesn't end well,
I'd see no other path

toward reaching
a favourable conclusion."

The fate of Germany
really hangs in the balance.

(footsteps marching)

(tense music)

ROBERT: December 16th,
it's a snowy morning

in the Ardennes for the allies.

It's overcast, it's freezing cold.

PAUL: The weather
was awful for everybody,

but it gave the Germans advantage

because the allied aircraft
are mostly grounded,

and that's the perfect environment

for the Germans to launch this...

bold offensive.

- Suddenly at 5:30,
it seems that hell has opened up.

(artillery bangs)

Every artillery piece
the Germans own,

heavy artillery, light artillery,

rocket artillery, the famous
Screaming Mimi's mortars.

The American position in the
Ardennes simply gets shredded.

(bomb booms)

PAUL:
Trees are thrown through the air

with this just shell after shell.

(bomb booms)

MARTIN: Allied forces,
they're caught off guard.

They are overwhelmed.

They certainly didn't expect
the Germans capable

of launching something
as big as the Ardennes Offensive.

GEOFFREY: Suddenly there's a couple
of hundred thousand German infantry

with 600 German Panzers
along 100-mile front.

(guns booming)

TOM: One of the four divisions

holding the allied line
in the Ardennes

is the newly arrived
American 106th.

- The 106th Division,
who are just in the wrong place

at the wrong time,
who have columns of German armour

coming at them from all directions,
are just overwhelmed by this.

And within a matter of hours,

7,000 men are captured.

GEOFFREY: It's the biggest mass
American surrender since Bataan.

DR. LIEB: At this point of time,
the German troops

are in a state of euphoria.

For weeks or months
or even years,

they had only known retreat,

and now for the first
and for a long time,

they are on the offense again.

MARTIN:
German troops are partly motivated

because they're being told,
"Take no prisoners.

This is your chance. Now you get
revenge against the Allies."

The result is that there is
literally a trail of massacres...

...that will lead eventually
to the most notorious

of about a dozen massacres,
and that's the one that takes place

in the afternoon of December 17th

just outside the city of Malmedy.

(tense music)

ROBERT:
The first SS Panzer division,

they've worked their way forward

under their battle group
commander Joachim Peiper.

Peiper's built for speed.

He's been told to get ahead
as fast as you possibly can

towards the Meuse,
cross the river, get to Antwerp.

(cannon booms)

And he's just overrun a couple
of rear echelon US detachments,

supply depots,
administrative troops.

- There's a brief firefight.

The Americans then surrender,
about 120 of them.

They move them
off the road into a field.

And the result
is that 84 Americans,

they are murdered after having
surrendered their weapons.

COL. DOUDS: This is one of
the largest war crimes against

US soldiers during World War II,

and it shows the ruthlessness

which this war
has achieved at this point.

(tense music)

TOM:
Some German units advance

as much as 20 miles
on the first day.

The initial success
of the Ardennes Offensive

confirms Hitler's sense

of divine destiny.

DR. LIEB:
In Hitler's mind, he thinks,

"Again, I was right. I took the
decision to launch this offensive

against the advice of my generals,

against the advice of my experts,
but I was right."

(cannon booms)

So in the first couple of days
of the Ardennes Offensive...

(rapid gunfire)

it seems for the Germans that they
have regained the initiative.

(rockets zooming)

(tense music)

TOM:
The Wehrmacht's attack stretches

from Belgium to Luxembourg,

but the initial reports
from the front are sketchy.

How to respond to the German assault
is the responsibility of one man:

General Dwight Eisenhower,

the Supreme Allied Commander.

- So Eisenhower has to determine
whether or not this is a feint.

Are the Germans trying
to essentially pull his resources

in the wrong direction?

Or is this a proper offensive?

Does he actually have to respond?

- Eisenhower immediately
defines the threat.

And he says,
"This is more than a German feint.

This is a major effort."

SARADA: And he thinks,
let's not see this

disaster as anything
but an opportunity.

The Germans wanna
fight out in the open...

...let's take it to them.

GEOFFREY:
Yeah, the Germans are advancing.

Yeah, the Germans have driven
a deep bulge into my lines,

but that offers me
this big German salient

that I can attack
from the shoulders.

- That's why we refer to this
as the Battle of the Bulge.

TOM: The Germans advance
across a 60-mile front,

but are held up by the
US 28th Infantry Division

at the Belgian town of Bastogne.

ROBERT: Both sides know
that Bastogne is the key.

If the Germans seize it,
they can control the road network

and motor all the way to the West,

perhaps even reach Antwerp.

But if the Americans hold it,

the Germans are stuck
in their tracks.

(dramatic music)

- So it's a race. It's a race
for the Germans to take it.

It's a race for the Americans
to try and resupply it

before it's lost.

So all of a sudden,

Bastogne becomes
this key road intersection,

not unlike Gettysburg
or Waterloo or Thermopylae.

It is everything.

TOM: As the Germans
attempt to surround Bastogne,

Eisenhower calls on the
101st Airborne Division:

the Screaming Eagles.

COL. DOUDS:
Their big contribution so far is

when they get dropped behind
enemy lines before D-Day.

(planes whirring)

They've basically been
in the game since June 5th of '44.

- To say that the 101st
is unprepared for this fight

is to understate
the matter considerably.

COL. DOUDS: They would
usually jump into war zones

carrying what they can carry,
which inherently means

they don't have a lot of armour,

they don't have any artillery.

ROBERT:
They don't have the winter gear,

that equipment that would
allow you to fight a tough battle

in the middle of December.
It's a come-as-you-are war.

COL. DOUDS: It tells you the degree
to which this is a crisis,

that in the midst of this crisis,
Eisenhower turns around

and looks and says,
"I'll take them."

Because the one thing they are

is they are a hardened
group of elites,

and they will go in there
and do the job

despite all the
limitations they face.

(tense music)

TOM: December 18th.

The 101st is trucked into Bastogne

to relieve the battered
28th Division.

The defence of this
Belgian town is the key

to the allied effort against
Adolf Hitler on the Western front.

And the key to the
defence of this town

is in the hands of the men
of the 101st Airborne.

(tense music)

COL. DOUDS: For the Germans,
this whole thing has to happen fast.

Every day they're standing in front
of Bastogne is time they don't have,

time where the weather
could clear up,

time where the rest
of the allied armies

are starting to get
reinforcements in there.

- And so the Germans are determined

to throw everything at Bastogne
that they possibly have.

(cannons booming)

There's an artillery bombardment.

They're attacking from all sides.

They're trying to push
the Americans out.

ROBERT: For the 101st Airborne,

the fighting around Bastogne
is as tough as any in the war.

(rapid gunfire)

It's out in the open,

it's bitterly cold,
there's snow on the ground.

COL. DOUDS: They're short on food,

and yet with almost just small arms,

bazookas and machine guns,

they're able to put up
enough bluster and defence

that they're able to hold the line.

(tense music)

TOM:
To reinforce the 101st in Bastogne,

Eisenhower turns to his
most aggressive commander:

General George Patton
and the Third Army.

- Patton, you know, promises him

three divisions in two days
for Bastogne,

which is something only
George S. Patton would promise.

- Promising three divisions.
And you know, that's 40,000-plus men

ready in 48 hours.

- Patton had already planned
for precisely this contingency

and was ready to take the lead
once he was given the operation.

(rapid gunfire)

TOM:
But until the Third Army arrives,

the Screaming Eagles
are virtually on their own.

MARTIN:
The Germans encircle the city,

and that encirclement
will be headline news

back in the United States.

There was this critical thought
that we might lose

the entire 101st Airborne
Division to the enemy.

ALEXANDRA: It looks as if
the Germans are really in control

and they send a message
to the 101st Airborne.

They say,
"You've got to surrender."

(tense music)

COL. DOUDS: They're gonna give it to
the acting division commander,

Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe.

McAuliffe will read the thing and
he'll send back a one-word reply,

and it says, "Nuts!"

Now, you gotta imagine, you know,
some savvy Airborne officer

gets to go give this
to the German delegation.

Of course, they read
"Nuts" and they're like,

"We don't understand
the colloquialism."

And so he gets to stand
there and he says,

"It's the same as go to hell."

And in a sense,
the whole unit kind of reaches out

and they hit the collective
"I believe" button...

...which is not so much
that they can hold out forever,

but Patton's coming.

They're all coming.

All we have to do
is hold out a little longer.

(tense music)
(cannon booms)

TOM: In Bastogne,
the men of the 101st Division

had been under siege
for almost a week.

But on December 26th,

Patton's Third Army
reaches the outskirts.

MARTIN: Famously,
it was the 4th Armored Division

that is given the task

of fighting up a narrow road
corridor toward Bastogne.

(tense, dramatic music)

And on the day after Christmas,
on December 26th,

elements of C Company
of the 37th Tank Battalion

pull up to the
Bastogne perimeter.

(cannon booming)

COL. DOUDS:
The allies break the German lines,

and now supplies
will be able to flow in.

And so for the Germans,

the Ardennes Offensive
breaks over Bastogne.

(cannons booming)

TOM: Even though
Bastogne is relieved,

fighting continues
across the front for weeks.

The United States Army
suffers more casualties

in the Battle of the Bulge

than in any other
battle in its history.

But ultimately, Hitler's
Ardennes Offensive is a failure.

ROBERT: For Hitler,
the catastrophe of the Ardennes

is that it was the last
round in the chamber.

The Germans really poured

their entire armoured
reserve into it.

They could have used those troops
perhaps to defend

more robustly in the east

and west simultaneously,
but they threw them all away

on a gamble,
and a gamble that failed.

(sombre music)

TOM: As the Allies
stop Hitler in the West,

the Soviets launch a massive
offensive in the East.

(distant gunfire)

SEAN: The Red Army
is a force of millions,

which has begun
its advance everywhere

from Finland and the Baltics
in the north,

all the way down
to the Black Sea in the south.

SIMON: The Soviet forces
had advanced incredible speed,

incredible hard fighting,

and Stalin had stopped them
between October and December

for a very clear strategic purpose;

to prepare a massive,
massive buildup of armour.

SEAN: So by January '45,

they are ready to go
on the offensive.

(bomb booms)

TOM: Within weeks,
Soviet forces cross into Germany.

The Red Army has breached
the border of the Fatherland.

(cannons booming)

DR. LIEB:
Having Soviet boots on German ground

is a major blow
for the German psyche because

they consider the Soviets

as their mortal enemies,

and this is a disaster for them.

- The war is finally
being brought home to the Germans.

DR. LIEB:
In theory, the Nazi authorities

would've had the time for months

to evacuate the civilians,

but that's something they didn't do,

because if you stay there, you'll
show that you've got more confidence

and that you are defending
your home territory.

GEOFFREY:
But basically, the Russians come

with such overwhelming force

that the Germans
can't stop them at the border.

And so this causes mass panic
as the German civilians

take to the roads to try to
escape this Russian onslaught,

knowing full well
what awaits if they stay.

(cannon booms)

SEAN: The Germans
have fought a horrific war

of annihilation in the Soviet Union.

Now the Soviets are finally able

to take revenge against the Germans.

GEOFFREY: They looted
and they pillaged and they raped

and they burned and they destroyed,

and they took pleasure in doing
these things as they advanced.

(sombre music)

- There's 100,000 or more
deaths on the German side

and something like maybe a fifth
of the female population is raped.

- This is the beginning
of what the Germans can expect

to receive when Red Army
break into Berlin.

(dramatic music)

TOM: Joseph Stalin engineers

the Soviet Union's final moves,

as the Red Army continues
its march west...

...towards Berlin.

SEAN: Berlin is really the be all,
end all of the war.

This is where we have
the Reich Chancellery,

where we have
the Reichstag building,

where Hitler has his bunker.

Once the Red Army reaches Berlin,
the war will be over

and it will be a great victory
and a great triumph.

(crowd chants)

COL. DOUDS:
For someone who lives in Berlin,

it's not lost on them
what happens in East Prussia.

The Soviets are getting retribution

and it's coming in the form
of German bodies,

German blood, rapes, killings,

and that's coming your way.

Almost the image of an incoming tide
that you cannot stop.

(bomb booms)

(tense music)

TOM: In the spring of 1945,

Germany is under assault
from multiple directions.

(cannon booms)

(tense, dramatic music)

In the east, the Red Army
rapidly advances towards Berlin.

In the west, the allies
continue on a broad front

as they approach the Rhine River.

PAUL: The Rhine is the German's

last key strategic position

to try and delay the inevitable

of the allies getting into Germany
and defeating the Third Reich.

GEOFFREY: It's a big,
broad river, fast-flowing, deep,

and the Germans know this,

so they're planning to kind of
defend every inch of it.

DR. LIEB: Their defence
strategy in the west is

to blow up all the bridges
across the River Rhine.

To use this huge natural barrier.

TOM: British Field Marshal
Bernard Montgomery

designs an operation
that will take Allied Forces

across the Rhine
and further into Germany.

But unexpectedly,
the American 9th Armored Division

discovers another way
into the German Reich.

PAUL: Really, out of nowhere,

an advanced unit of Americans
ends up at the Remagen Bridge,

the key bridge across the Rhine.

And the Germans, they failed
to destroy the bridge properly.

MARTIN: That's not because
the Germans were dumb,

the Germans tried
to blow the bridge.

It's just that they didn't have
enough explosives to do the job.

GEOFFREY:
But it was very stoutly built.

The bridge just kind of jumps on
these really heavy stone piers

and then settles back into place.

The Allies
couldn't believe their luck,

so they raced forward
and they took the bridge.

And they get across the Rhine three
weeks earlier than anticipated.

- Once you're over the Rhine,
you're into Germany proper.

It's a crucial moment
for the war in the West.

DR. LIEB: For the Germans,
this is a huge blow

because now the Allies can bring in

reinforcements much quicker

and Hitler is absolutely
furious about this.

ROBERT: Oh, Hitler is prone
to rage at this time,

and he demands
that everyone responsible

will be immediately
court marshalled,

not brought to Berlin to explain,

but a drumhead court marshal
in the field and shot.

(sombre music)

TOM: Hitler retreats to Berlin.

He orders the destruction

of bridges, roads,
railways, factories,

anything that can aid
the allied advance.

MARTIN: This Nero order,

named in honour of the Roman Emperor

who famously allowed
the city of Rome to burn,

would authorize German forces

to destroy absolutely everything
as they retreated.

(thunderous explosion)

DAN: Blow up the bridges,
blow up the sanitation,

blow up the power plants,

even if it doesn't do
any good in the war effort.

There's no reason to worry
about a post-war Germany.

He stopped caring about
the individual people

'cause they're no longer worthy

of surviving the war.

TOM: Hitler commands his loyal

and capable minister of armaments,

Albert Speer,
to carry out his order.

Speer refuses.

GEOFFREY:
Because he sees that Hitler's,

you know, gone mad essentially.

And Speer actually
comes to Berlin and says,

right before the end,
and he says, "I haven't done it."

DR. LIEB: This shows
that the bond between Hitler

and his leadership is being
broken to a certain degree.

It's almost to the very last days,
the crumbling Third Reich,

that this link
finally starts to collapse.

Hitler has now lost control
of the entire situation.

He's now focused
only on the battle of Berlin.

(sombre music)

TOM: In the garden outside
the Reich Chancellery,

the Fuhrer reviews
a formation of Hitler youth

who have been awarded
the Knight's Cross

for bravery in battle.

Now, many will be
ordered to defend Berlin.

ROBERT: The Hitler youth,

14 and 15 and 16-year-old boys.

(speaks German)

- By any analysis, this is insane.

GEOFFREY: And he comes up
out of the bunker

and he pins medals on these

sort of beardless little boys.

Any rational onlooker
can see that Hitler has lost

all attachment to reason.

ROBERT: It may be
he's thinking of the last lost war,

but I think 1918

is enough of a obsession with Hitler

that he is determined that Germany
will not give in this time.

There will be no surrender.

There will be total war to the end.

If Germany is gonna go down,

it's going to go down
in a blaze of glory.

(tense music)

TOM: Allied forces rapidly advanced

through the Ruhr Valley
and into the heart of Germany.

The British and Americans had agreed

that Soviet forces
should capture Berlin,

but Stalin grows suspicious
of allied success.

MICHEL:
You have to remember that Stalin is

naturally and not unreasonably
deeply mistrustful.

So when the Western Allies
start pouring into Western Germany

far faster than anyone expects,

Stalin fears that there may be
something that he doesn't see.

SIMON: Stalin is always paranoid

that the Western powers are going to

make a deal with the Germans
at the last minute

against the Soviet Union,
against the Communists.

TOM: In Moscow, Stalin summons

Marshal Georgy Zhukov,

the hero of Stalingrad and Kursk,

and Marshal Ivan Konev,

who has led the first
Ukrainian front,

a famed Red Army group,
throughout the war.

SIMON: He sits there
with the map and he says,

"Who's gonna take Berlin?"

SEAN: So Stalin effectively sets up

a kind of race between them

to see who will
take Berlin first.

So this is a way
of motivating his generals

because Stalin, of course,
wanted to ensure

that the Red Army would be
the first to reach Berlin.

SIMON: And in an amazing scene,

both Marshals salute

and leave the room
and run to their cars

to start the race to Berlin.

(tense music)

TOM: By mid-April, the Red Army
is closing in on Berlin.

Zhukov's forces
approach from the east.

Konev's troops will attack
from the south.

- The final assault on Berlin begins

with a ferocious artillery barrage.

(cannons booming)

Something like 9,000 guns

rained down 1.2 million shells.

(cannons hiss)

GEOFFREY: To put that in context,
the British fired one million

rounds of artillery onto
the German trenches on the Somme

over like two weeks in World War I.

Now, in one day, more shells
into the streets of Berlin.

TOM: Zhukov's forces meet

particularly fierce resistance
in the Seelow heights,

an area the Germans consider
the gates of Berlin.

SEAN: The Germans are dug in.

They have no desire to surrender

because they know
they would be viewed as traitors.

Berlin is meant to be
a fortress city, Festung Berlin.

This means it has to be
defended at all costs.

- Hitler's order was to keep
fighting until there's nothing left.

They're not gonna admit
the war's been lost.

DR. LIEB:
Hitler is now facing total defeat,

and he wants to drag

the entire German people
into this total defeat.

DAN: The population
has been pressed into service.

They've been, you know,
building tank traps

and digging ditches.
But I don't think you can

fool a bunch of people who are
living in cities that are rubble.

You hear the artillery
in the distance

that the Soviets
are shooting at your city.

I mean, we're past
the time of illusions.

You're people
at the end of the rope.

GEOFFREY:
The German troops that are left,

it's this bizarre assembly of

overage people that normally
wouldn't be drafted, or underage.

MARTIN: You have a large number
of very young

members of the Volkssturm.

They were divided
into these tank hunting units

where they were 12 and 13-year-old
boys that were equipped

with this very effective
German anti-tank weapon

called the Panzerfaust.

GEOFFREY: These basically
one-shot German bazookas,

and they're gonna be
in these load of fighting holes

waiting for the Soviet tanks to come
and take their one shot, and be,

you know, crushed into pulp
under the treads.

PAUL: The ideology of the
Reich has gone out the window.

You don't know
what you're fighting for anymore.

You are now protecting your street

and your friends and your family
from the marauders that are coming.

GEOFFREY: If you're still in Berlin
by April 1945,

you're not gonna get out.

So you're fighting for your life.

(bazooka booms)

(tense music)

TOM: On April 19th, Zhukov's troops

break through the German lines
at Seelow Heights.

Konev enters the Nazi
capital from the south.

(rapid gunfire)

SIMON:
Battle of Berlin is brutal.

It's an urban battlefield,

which is the hardest sort
of fighting and the most costly.

(rapid gunfire)

It's impossible
not to take every building.

You can't leave
buildings behind you.

You're under fire all the time
from buildings on both sides.

Large amounts
of civilians are killed,

and it's incredibly
slow and dangerous.

(tense music)

GEOFFREY: This moonscape
of Berlin that's already been

just shattered to rubble
is now just being pounded

by companies of Soviet infantry
filtering into the city

from all points.
I mean, literally all points.

(tense, dramatic music)

SIMON: But in the end,
this extraordinary battle,

the Soviet troops begin
to converge on the Chancellery.

(tense music)

TOM:
Beneath the Reich Chancellery,

Hitler is sequestered in a bunker

with his companion, Eva Braun,

and surrounded
by aides, secretaries,

and Nazi party officials.

He believes that the military

and the German people

have let him down.

- Hitler wants to keep
the resistance going

for as long as
possible to inflict

as much damage
on the invading armies.

However, he does not want
to outlast, to outlive the war.

He does not want
to become a prisoner of war.

He does not want to become
some type of curiosity

exhibited by his enemies.

ROBERT: And so he has to
stay alive as long as possible,

as close to the
bitter end as possible

so that there will never really be

an idea of Nazi Germany
in people's minds

that does not include Adolf Hitler.

He's going to go down
in Wagnerian fashion

and take a world with him.

(tense music)

TOM:
On April 29th, Hitler is informed

that his longtime ally,

the Italian dictator,
Benito Mussolini,

has been executed.

His body put on display
by Italian partisans.

GEOFFREY: Mussolini has just been
hung upside down

in a gas station in northern Italy,

along with his mistress,
Clara Petacci,

where he's like mocked
and spat upon and vilified.

Hitler fears the same fate
for himself.

- The Soviets are right outside
the Fuhrer bunker.

He's listening to the
shelling happening above him.

(muffled shelling)

- And so Adolf Hitler,
on April 30th, 1945,

commits suicide in the Fuhrer bunker
along with Eva Braun...

...in a city that has been
reduced to rubble.

(sombre music)

- When Hitler commits suicide,

Stalin is woken in the night
by Marshal Zhukov,

and Marshal Zhukov says to him,

"Marshal Stalin, I've got news.

Hitler is dead and he's
committed suicide in the ruins,"

and there's a long silence.
And then Stalin says something like,

"So that's the end of the bastard."

Puts the phone down
and goes back to sleep.

(sombre music)

(distant gunfire)

TOM: On May 2nd,
the Soviets raised their flag

above the ruins of the Reichstag.

On May 7th,
German General Alfred Jodl

surrenders to the
Western Allies at Reims, France.

A day later, the Germans
officially surrendered

to the Soviets.

- With the stroke of the pen,
Nazi Germany ceases to exist

on May 8th, 1945.

(tense music)

TRUMAN: This is a solemn
but a glorious hour.

General Eisenhower informs me

that the forces of Germany
has surrendered

to the United Nations.

MICHEL: Here we are
at the end of a brutal war

against a brutal
adversary in Europe.

And there was such great costs

with so much exhaustion.

It's almost impossible to imagine
what that must have been like.

TRUMAN: Our rejoicing
is sobered and subdued

by a supreme consciousness
of the terrible price we have paid

to rid the world of Hitler

and his evil band.

SIMON: Hitler was the
ultimate reckless gambler.

Risking everything,
even Germany, even Europe.

TRUMAN:
Let us not forget the sorrow

and the heartache,
which today abide

in the homes of so many
of our neighbours.

SEAN: The Second World War,
unlike the first,

is one in which the
majority of the casualties

actually happened
among the civilian population.

A lot of it was simply because of

the vast atrocities committed.

(sombre music)

The war left terrible scars
on the landscape of Europe

and in the memories
of the populations.

TRUMAN: We must work
to bind up the wounds

of a suffering world.

The West is free,

but the East is still in bondage.

JON: In the popular mind,

World War II tends to wrap up

with the glory of VE Day.

It did not happen that way

for the people who were fighting it.

In the Pacific,

there's no end in sight.

TRUMAN: When the
last Japanese division

has surrendered unconditionally,

then only will our
fighting job be done.

Until that day,

let no man abandon his post

or slacken his efforts.

(plane rumbles)

- After VE Day, Europeans
facing chaos and uncertainty

begin the long work of putting

their shattered
world back together.

In the Pacific,
the war is reaching a crescendo.

As the United States fights its way
to the Japanese home islands,

a new weapon is tested
in the deserts of New Mexico.

A noiseless flash

with a potential
to change the world.

Subtitles by Sky Access Services