Original subtitles

[Adolf Hitler, in German] The Jewish watchword

"Proletarians of the world, unite"

will be conquered by our response,

"Working men of all nations, recognize your common foe!"

[crowd cheering]

[somber music playing]

[Devin Pendas, in English] Hitler had never made any secret

of his desire to make Germany free of the Jews.

JEW

[Pendas] By the late 1930s, we see increased radicalization.

Jews are facing increasing pressure to give up their property.

- [glass shattering] - [men grunting]

[Pendas] Many thousands of Jews are being imprisoned,

often beaten, and... and occasionally murdered.

The goal for Hitler and the Nazis

is to put more pressure on the Jews to leave.

[uneasy music playing]

[radio announcer] Jews from the Reich are liquidating their property

accumulated in Germany for generations,

and are drifting to Hamburg, the harbor city,

where they will set out on German steamers for a new life across the sea.

[ship horn blows]

[Pendas] The SS St. Louis was a ship,

uh, with hundreds of German Jewish refugees on it.

They had visas for Cuba.

[Feldman] For us youngsters, it was really quite an adventure

because this was a luxury liner

where you had a cinema and a ballroom and a swimming pool,

and all the usual games you have on a boat.

We really had a very good time.

[evocative piano music playing]

[Feldman] Until we landed and found that, um, things began to go wrong.

[ominous music playing]

[Pendas] When they arrived in Havana Harbor,

they were informed that the Cuban government had changed its mind,

had canceled their entry visas,

and now they're sort of stuck.

[Feldman] And the Cuban police came on

and the immigration people,

and we were told, "Well, not today, not today."

"Mañana, tomorrow, tomorrow," but tomorrow never came.

[Pendas] The ship hopes that they will be allowed to disembark

in the United States,

but the American government denies that request,

and the ship has no choice but to turn back.

[Feldman] One man committed suicide with a razor blade.

I saw him rushing out, the blood dripping down,

and, um... he jumped into the water.

But even when he was in the rescue launch,

he was still trying to pull his arteries out

and didn't want to be saved.

At the time, Goebbels published in the newspapers,

"You see, nobody wants them either. At least we are building camps for them."

[ominous music continues]

- [glass shattering] - [people screaming]

[theme music playing]

[bells tolling]

[people murmuring indistinctly]

[camera whirring]

[dramatic music playing]

[man] Attention! Tribunal.

[Sidney Alderman] One of the most striking and revealing...

of all the captured documents which have come to hand...

is a document which we have come to know as the Hossbach Note...

[dramatic music continues]

...of a conference in the Reich Chancellery on 5 November, 1937,

in the course of which, Hitler outlined to those present

the possibilities and necessities

of expanding their foreign policy

and requested, I quote,

"That his statements be looked upon in the case of his death

as his last will and testament."

The document destroys any possible doubt

concerning the Nazis' premeditation

of their crimes against peace.

[Hitler shouting indistinctly]

[foreboding music playing]

[Pendas] For the prosecution, this is a smoking gun, right?

You've got Hitler telling several of the defendants,

"We're gonna annex Austria. We're gonna annex Czechoslovakia."

That is pretty close to a textbook piece of evidence for conspiracy.

[Nicole Eaton] At this very secret meeting which took place in the Reich Chancellery,

Hitler called all of his generals together

and explained the sort of grand layout of what he saw coming ahead,

which was the absolute necessary war for the survival of the German people.

[Pendas] He says, "We have to conquer living space,

because if we don't, we will fail as a people." Right?

"We will die out, and we will deserve to die out."

[Alexandra Richie] He's talking almost as if this is going to be his legacy.

He's telling his would-be successors

that, "If I'm no longer here, what I want you to do

is make sure you fulfill these territorial goals for me."

And the ultimate aim is Lebensraum,

is getting living space for the Germans.

And so there's a sort of mission that's creeping into his language

which now, overtly and explicitly, talks about military action.

[Christopher Browning] And at this point, Hitler has conducted a series of gambles

starting in 1936.

First, as he marches into the Rhineland,

the French do nothing, the British do nothing.

Next, '38, he marches into Austria.

He's greeted with huge crowds, sort of victory parade to... to Vienna.

So having gone that far, then there is a German minority

that lives in the kind of U-shaped ring of Czechoslovakia on the German border

that's called the Sudetenland.

[Omer Bartov] There are about three million Germans

living in the mountainous Sudetenland.

Germany wants those Germans to belong to it.

And there's a fledgling Nazi Party there that the German regime supports.

And so Hitler's argument is, uh, "We just want these territories."

"They are full of Germans. They should belong to Germany."

- [troops marching rhythmically] - [dramatic music playing]

[Richie] So Hitler, he makes a case

that it's the Sudeten Germans' right to be reunited in the German Reich.

He basically threatens to invade the Sudetenland,

and there are many, many people all over Europe who realize

that one could go to war over this, but do you really want to?

[William L. Shirer] One day early in September,

I kissed Tess and Eileen goodbye,

and once more caught a plane to Germany.

Hitler has demanded that Czechoslovakia agree

to the handing over of Sudetenland.

Mr. Chamberlain has agreed to convey this demand

to the Czechoslovak government.

[uneasy music playing]

[Steve Wick] William L. Shirer, like all foreign correspondents,

wants to get a news story out of it,

and he's talking to Czech officials as part of his reporting duties.

They believed they were being sold down the river,

and I think Shirer believed that as well.

He wants to report what they're doing 'cause he... he feels...

To him, he thinks it's a mistake.

[Shirer] Just as I was about to go on the air at 2:00 a.m.

with the day's story and the official communiqué,

Goebbels and the Nazi boss of German radio

forbade me to say anything over the air, except to read the official communiqué.

[Wick] The censorship in Nazi Germany is very challenging.

"You can't say this. You can't say that."

You know, you can't describe German moves as "aggression."

You can't do anything critical at all about Hitler,

and that drove him absolutely crazy.

So he was really in a very tight window in terms of what he could say and not say.

[crowd chanting indistinctly]

[radio announcer] Now in a minute or two, we're told Hitler will be coming.

He has left the Chancellery a few seconds ago,

and he's driving down the Leipziger Strasse

to the Potsdamer Platz.

- [fireworks exploding] - [crowd cheering]

[Hitler, in German] I have placed a memorandum

representing Germany's last and final proposal

with the British government.

That any territory which is German

who wants to come to Germany, belongs to Germany.

[crowd cheering]

[radio announcer 2, in English] The world prays fervently

that the roar of this plane, this dramatic meeting, may bring peace.

[Richie] The conference held between Germany on the one hand,

the British, the French, and the Italians on the other hand,

in which those great powers negotiate

that Hitler has the right to the Sudetenland.

[Bartov] The thinking is,

if we finally let Hitler have that territory,

there won't be any more reason for conflict.

All the Germans will be together,

and Hitler will no longer make any more demands.

[Browning] The reaction to Munich on the Allies' side is mixed emotions.

On the one hand, people are greatly relieved

that war has not broken out.

On the other hand, there is a sense of shame

that they have sold out the Czechs.

So it was, on Hitler's part, a brinksmanship gamble

that ultimately the Allies would cave.

[Shirer] It's all over.

At 12:30 this morning, 30 minutes after midnight,

Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain, and Daladier signed a pact

turning over Sudetenland to Germany.

Czechoslovakia, which is asked to make all the sacrifices

so that Europe may have peace,

was not consulted here at any stage of the talks.

[somber music playing]

[Wick] Shirer is in Munich,

and he sees Hitler in the street passing by,

and he sees in his face this determination,

this satisfaction that he just took another part of another country.

[Shirer] Hitler brushed past me like the conqueror he is this morning.

I noticed his swagger.

[Wick] Shirer reads into his face and in his eyes this determination

that, "I got away with it again."

"I fooled the British. I'm gonna keep going."

"They're not gonna stop me. No one's gonna get in my way."

"They didn't get in the way in the Rhineland,

they didn't get in my way in Austria,

and they're not getting in my way in the Sudetenland."

[crowd cheering]

[patriotic music playing]

[radio announcer, in German] On 3rd October,

our dear Führer visited his German Sudetenland.

[Richie, in English] The decision to... to give up the Sudetenland to Hitler

had many, many implications...

KRUMAU THANKS THEIR LIBERATORS!

...because this was a very important physical geographical barrier to invasion,

which means the road to Prague is open,

should Hitler decide to go further.

[Pendas] A few months after the Munich Agreement,

Hitler moves in and takes over the rest of Czechoslovakia,

which, you know, contains almost no Germans.

[vehicles passing by]

[Pendas] The Czechs don't really put up a fight. They can't.

Once he has control of the Sudetenland,

they don't have any natural defensive terrain.

[Browning] When he occupies Prague in the spring of '39,

he is occupying for the first time a country that is non-German.

[Richie] Hitler looks at the collapse over the Sudetenland

as just simply more of the weakness of the Western Allies.

They're not going to fight him. They're never going to stand up to him.

[Bartov] Now, according to the Hossbach Memorandum,

it's not about getting all the Germans together.

It's about having Lebensraum,

living space.

[David Maxwell-Fyfe] Do you remember Hitler saying

that at six o'clock in the morning,

the German army would invade Czechoslovakia from all sides?

[von Ribbentrop, in German] I do not recall the exact words.

[Maxwell-Fyfe, in English] Do you remember Hitler saying

that within two days, the Czech army would not exist anymore?

[in German] I do not remember the details. No.

[Maxwell-Fyfe, in English] You think you could answer one of my questions directly?

I'll ask you it again.

Will you agree with me that you had threatened

to march in in overwhelming strength,

and to bomb Prague if they didn't agree?

What further pressure could you put on Czechoslovakia?

[von Ribbentrop, in German] War, for instance.

[Maxwell-Fyfe, in English] That... What is that but war?

[unsettling music playing]

[Browning] In the spring of '39, the war drums begin to beat,

and the Poles, they begin to realize that they're next on the menu,

and their answer is to not do what the Czechs did.

And so the Polish strategy is, "No, we don't negotiate."

"We don't surrender anything."

[drums beating]

[radio announcer] Poland's leaders were military men.

They answered force with force. They enlarged the Polish army.

[Bartov] It's clear by then to British policymakers

that the next move would be Poland.

So both France and Britain are now warning

that if Germany, uh, attacks Poland,

then they will declare war on it,

but they're still highly reluctant to do so.

[Nazi official shouting in German]

- [troops shouting] - [rhythmic marching]

[unsettling music continues]

[Richie] The Soviet Union has also been watching all of the developments

of the Anschluss and... and Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia

with great, great interest,

and Stalin has been very nervous

because he's seen Germany getting stronger and stronger,

and he isn't sure that Poland is gonna be enough of a buffer zone

if, uh, Germany should attack Poland first and then head off to the Soviet Union.

[Francine Hirsch] After Munich, Stalin is very upset

that he hadn't been invited to the table,

that he had been excluded from this conference.

If they had turned their backs on Czechoslovakia,

then what was the role that they were imagining

the Soviet Union played in the future of Europe?

Hitler has some respect for Stalin,

but absolutely despises Bolshevism

and... and what he thinks the Soviet Union stands for.

[crowd applauding]

And Stalin despises racial ideology of Nazi Germany.

So... so these are countries and leaders that are enemies,

but after the Munich conference,

Stalin really redoubles his efforts to try to reach out to Hitler.

Hitler signals that he's open to discussions.

[intriguing music playing]

[Hirsch] Stalin brings in his Minister of Foreign Affairs,

Vyacheslav Molotov,

then they invite Ribbentrop to... to Moscow.

[Pendas] Joachim von Ribbentrop is an interesting figure.

He's one of these mediocrities who manages to reach

very prominent positions in the Third Reich.

He was a champagne dealer for most of his adult life,

and then becomes the Nazi foreign minister.

[Bartov] He's a Nazi who had almost no experience in diplomacy before,

and Molotov is a long-term Bolshevik.

These two men,

they're acting very much as emissaries of their respective leaders.

[von Ribbentrop, in German] The reception given to me by Stalin and Molotov

was very friendly.

I told the Russian gentlemen

that Germany would do everything to settle

the situation in Poland

and to settle the difficulties peacefully.

But I left no doubt that an armed conflict might break out.

That much was obvious.

[Hirsch, in English] And that's the meeting at which they work out

the Soviet-German Nonaggression Pact.

[uneasy music playing]

[radio announcer] And then in August, the bombshell.

This time, from Moscow.

Incredibly, Stalin and Hitler join hands.

The archenemies of old become fellow aggressors,

and von Ribbentrop flies back to Berlin

with the news that the way is now clear.

[Richie] When he gets news from Ribbentrop,

Hitler says "Now we have them."

And, of course, the world is absolutely shocked.

You couldn't find two more natural enemies.

Even the leadership within the Reich is stunned by this news

because it's so unlikely.

It just so goes against what Hitler has been proclaiming

about Jewish Bolsheviks.

But then the thing that killed Germany in the First World War

was fighting with Russia on one front and the Western Allies on the other.

And Hitler's found a way out of that conundrum

by doing this pact.

[Hitler, in German] Throughout centuries, Germany and Russia

have lived next to each other in peace and friendship.

Why should it not be possible in the future once again?

[in English] The Poles immediately knew that this was their doom.

[intense string music playing]

[Eaton] And it was only a few days later, after the pact was announced,

that Hitler told his generals to begin mobilization

to almost imminently invade Poland.

[radio announcer] In Poland, there is no official comment

on the latest German moves,

but a dispatch from Warsaw says the country is standing firm

and ready to fight if necessary.

[Richie] On the eve of the war itself,

there was a German operation, Operation Himmler,

and there were a number of false flag operations

staged along the border

to make it look as if the Poles had attacked Germany,

and therefore that the Germans were defending themselves.

Nazi Germany staged a fake attack

and even brought concentration camp prisoners,

dressed them up in uniform, and had them drugged, had them killed,

to make it look like Poland had attacked first.

And Hitler says, "This is an outrage. Poland has provoked Germany,

and therefore, we have to, uh, we have to answer back."

[intense rhythmic music playing]

[Richie] Well, of course, Hitler's been preparing for war for a while.

[jet engines droning]

[radio announcer] Here is a United Press flash from Warsaw

which says officially that German planes have bombed railway stations

in three Polish towns.

[jet engine droning]

[air-raid sirens blaring]

[bombs exploding]

[Deirdre van Dyk] In September 1939,

the Nazis march into Poland,

and my grandfather, along with other press people,

are invited to follow along behind

so that they can report their glorious conquering of Europe.

[Shirer] On Tuesday, I found myself on a hill in the midst of a city

which had been occupied two days before.

Two miles to the north of us, the killing was going on.

You could hear the deep roar of the German artillery,

the Poles had none,

and the rat-tat-tat of the machine guns on both sides.

[artillery firing]

[Shirer] The sound of these shells exploding

or the bombs from the airplanes, was deafening.

[artillery fires]

[Shirer] Not the slightest sign of strain or excitement

among the German officers at our observation post.

They reminded me of coaches of a championship football team at home,

who sit calmly on the sidelines and watch the machine they created do its stuff.

Below us, in the stretch of the town,

women with their youngsters stood around in little clusters...

[explosion]

...listening to the din of the cannon and the rattling of machine guns.

The bitterness, the anguish on the faces of old women was indescribable.

Tragic and grotesque.

Grotesque that we should be standing there

watching the killing as though it were a football game,

and we, comfortably off in the grandstand.

[engine roaring]

[Richie] So the Germans' attack is very fast, very, very effective.

All of a sudden on the 17th of September, the Soviet Union invades from their side.

[bombs exploding]

[dark music playing]

[Hirsch] What the world didn't know was that there were these secret agreements

that were part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact,

in which Hitler and Stalin had agreed that they would divide up Poland.

[trial participant] Will you please explain what took place?

[von Ribbentrop, in German] During the negotiations

with Stalin and Molotov,

a line of demarcation was agreed.

So that in the event of war,

there should be a boundary line

to avoid a collision

between Germany and Russian interests.

This was done by a secret supplementary protocol.

[trial spectators murmuring]

[Hirsch, in English] The Soviet prosecution team and judge,

they left for Nuremberg without knowing the details of the secret protocols.

And Ribbentrop then makes the argument

that if Germany was guilty of crimes against peace,

then the Soviets, right, certainly must have been too.

For this to be revealed in court,

for Ribbentrop himself to be describing it,

this... this was a real moment in the trial.

[intense string music playing]

[Eaton] Within about a month, Poland ceased to exist as a country.

It was completely partitioned,

divided up between Germany and the Soviet Union.

[Hitler, in German] Poland, the state whose borders England had guaranteed,

was swept from the map within 18 days, with that guarantee unfulfilled.

With that, the first phase of this war has come to an end,

and the second begins.

[metallic clanging]

[Eaton, in English] All of the ideas behind the German racial crusade,

behind Lebensraum,

behind all of these brutal visions for dominance in Eastern Europe,

can be found in Mein Kampf, in Hitler's speeches.

[somber piano music playing]

[Eaton] But it's truly in Poland in 1939

that the Nazis first had the chance to carry out these policies.

[Bartov] Germany invades with its military...

ENTRY PERMIT

...but right behind its military are Einsatzgruppen,

meaning task forces

which are made up of a mix of Gestapo, the SS, uh, uniformed police.

Those units are charged

with eliminating Germany's political and biological enemies,

and that's what they do.

- [Nazi soldier] Juden! - [woman screaming]

[Richie] Even before the war begins, lists of about 60,000 people are drawn up

of the Polish intelligentsia and the elite,

including Jews, but not specifically Jews,

priests, landowners, university professors, um,

business owners, government officials...

[guns firing]

[Richie] This is not gonna be a war of the conquest of territory merely.

This is going to be a war of annihilation.

[gun fires]

[somber piano music continues]

[Eaton] Especially after the invasion of Poland,

Himmler's power grew significantly.

He and the SS were in charge of much of the purging of Jews.

And so while they are taking over Poland,

they are also radicalizing policy against the Jews.

[uneasy music playing]

[Richie] Himmler sees in the invasion of Poland and in the east,

the chance for him to grow a vast empire of power.

Empire of power not only controlling people's lives,

controlling slave labor, controlling the camps,

but economic power as well,

because, of course, a lot of things are going to be looted.

A lot of money is going to be made out of slave labor.

Himmler's got all of that in his mind as well

as he starts to create this huge empire.

[Pendas] But for the Nazis, there's a problem

that comes with their success in Poland,

which has the largest Jewish population in Europe.

According to the Nazis, Jews were a dangerous racial other.

So the question is, "What do we do with these Jews?"

So as a kind of an interim measure,

they decide to essentially concentrate the Jewish population of Poland

in ghettos in major cities, where Jews are locked in.

They're tremendously overcrowded. They're not particularly big areas.

They're bringing Jews from all over Poland and cramming them into these cities.

They forced Jews to wear a discernible badge on their clothing,

a star that identifies them as Jewish,

so that everyone knows who is and who is not Jewish.

So it's a strategy of extreme segregation and isolation.

[dark music playing]

FOR JEWS - FOR NON JEWS

And at that time, when we moved to the ghetto,

life started, really, to be very difficult for us.

We sold whatever we were able to.

My father got sick...

and we were not able to feed him with the right food.

He died of pneumonia in the ghetto.

[Browning] So in this phase, it's still very unclear,

both to the Jewish victims and to the Germans,

how ultimately this is going to settle out.

Though for the Nazis, the vision is ultimately the Jews have to go.

It's a question of when and how,

and that will be answered depending upon the outcome of the war.

[dramatic music playing]

[radio announcer] The responsibility lies on the shoulders of one man.

By his latest act of naked aggression,

Hitler has committed a crime not only against Poland,

but against the whole human race.

[Pendas] Shortly after Germany attacks Poland,

Britain and France declare war.

[Hitler, in German] In 1939,

the Western Powers dropped their masks.

[soldiers cheering]

[Hitler] They sent Germany their declaration of war.

And I can only say to France and England,

"You too shall have your war!"

[crowd cheering]

[Eaton, in English] War, for Hitler, was a fundamental human activity,

the motor of history.

Hitler felt that war would determine the rise and fall of a nation,

that only by conquering other nations would one race rise up.

It was not a sort of lament that war would be necessary,

but it was... it was something he desired.

[Hitler, in German] Our enemies, they already cry out today,

"Germany shall fall!"

Yet Germany can give but one answer:

Germany will live,

and hence Germany will win!

[crowd cheering]

[in English] France and Britain declare war on Germany,

and then they do nothing,

and they wait,

and they settle into what the Germans called the sitzkrieg,

uh, "sitting war."

There's a few skirmishes here and there,

but basically, the British Expeditionary Force

and the bulk of the French army

are sitting and waiting for something to happen.

They have no plans to attack Germany.

The French have built a protective line,

the Maginot Line,

and very little happens until May 10th, 1940,

Germany attacks the Netherlands, Belgium, and France.

[suspenseful music playing]

[jet engines droning]

[Richie] One of the key lessons Hitler takes from World War I is that,

really, if you're going to defeat Eastern Europe,

you have to take care of Western Europe first.

So you have to defeat France. You have to defeat the Low Countries.

You do not want a war on two fronts.

Hitler is determined to control the coastline,

from northern Spain all the way up to basically the Arctic Circle.

It's a way to neutralize Britain

so that there's no opportunity for the blockade of Germany

or to launch an attack against Germany.

- [artillery fires] - [tank engine rumbling]

[Pendas] So after the German armor breaks through

and races to the Channel coast,

they've managed to split the British forces in Europe

from the bulk of the French army.

And the British are trapped in northern France and southern Belgium.

And so they retreat to the coast.

There's one open port, Dunkirk, in northern France.

DUNKIRK

[radio announcer, in French] Dunkirk.

Here the French navy lost in quick succession the SS Niger,

SS L'Adroit, SS La Bourrasque, the SS Foudroyant, SS Cyclone,

and SS Siroco.

Despite the heroic defenders,

the soldiers at Dunkirk reach their limits.

Only the sailors fight on.

[Pendas, in English] The British forces and some French troops gather there

and begin to evacuate to England.

The British famously call for any private boats

that are capable of crossing the Channel to come and help with the evacuation.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Pendas] The German tank forces, in particular, are exhausted.

They have been fighting nonstop for quite some time at this point.

They're running low on ammunition, they're running low on fuel,

and so the British are able to evacuate

the overwhelming majority of their forces in continental Europe

and a fair number of French troops as well.

They do have to abandon most of their heavy equipment, however.

So it's not a victory for the British by any means,

even if the British media makes it into a moral victory.

[air-raid sirens blaring]

[radio announcer] Alarms sound over Paris.

Nazi bombers attack in earnest.

[air-raid sirens continue]

[Pendas] After the British withdrawal at Dunkirk,

the French are in disarray,

and their politics are even more fragmented.

And so, a decision is made to sign an armistice with the Germans.

[intense orchestral music playing]

[Wick] William L. Shirer is with the German army in Paris.

He sees the swastika on the Eiffel Tower.

And he gets a tip from a source, an officer in the German High Command,

who tells him there's gonna be an armistice.

The French are gonna surrender,

and Hitler wants it to be carried out in the same railroad car

that the French made the Germans surrender in 1918.

That railroad car was in a museum

in the little village of Compiègne, France, north of Paris.

Shirer gets in a car and drives there.

And he sees the train is pulled out of the museum.

Everything's being set up for this event.

There's only two foreign correspondents there,

a freelance correspondent for NBC

and Shirer.

[van Dyk] My grandfather realizes the Nazis miked everything,

and he goes around and searches in the woods

for the sound engineers

and listens outside.

He got the whole story.

He was allowed to broadcast

with the condition that it would be held in Berlin

and not broadcast until after Hitler himself

had announced the signing of the treaty.

[intriguing music playing]

[van Dyk] Someone in Berlin flipped the wrong switch.

[Wick] It went through a shortwave system on to New York.

[van Dyk] My grandfather got the biggest scoop of his life.

He scooped Hitler and the whole world.

[Shirer] Negotiations began at 3:30 p.m. German summer time this afternoon.

A warm June sun beat down on the great elm and pine trees

and cast pleasant shadows on the wooded avenue

as Herr Hitler,

with the German plenipotentiaries at his side, appeared.

His face was grave, but there is a certain spring in his step

as he walks for the first time towards the spot

where Germany's fate was sealed on that November day of 1918.

In the center is a great granite block

which stands some three feet above the ground.

Hitler, followed by the others, walks slowly over to it,

steps up, and reads the inscription engraved in great high letters,

"Here on the 11th of November, 1918,

succumbed the criminal pride of the German Empire,

vanquished by the free peoples which it tried to enslave."

We looked for an expression on Hitler's face,

but it does not change.

And in this quaint, old, wartime Wagons-Lits car,

another armistice is being drawn up as I speak to you now.

We peered through the windows of the car

and saw Adolf Hitler laying down the terms.

The German leader told the French

that he had not chosen this spot out of revenge,

but merely to right an old wrong.

What a turning back of the clock,

what a reversing of history we've been watching here

in this beautiful Compiègne forest this afternoon.

[whimsical string music playing]

[Bartov] After the signing of the armistice,

Hitler goes on a very early morning tour of Paris.

And Paris is still asleep. It's very early in the morning.

He goes to see the... the Eiffel Tower.

He goes to the Panthéon.

He visits Napoleon's monument

and seems to imagine himself as the victor over Napoleon as well.

It's as if he still needs to persuade himself

that he has won that war,

and then vanishes into the mist and goes back to Germany.

[radio announcer, in German] All Germans thank the Führer

for the greatest victory in history.

The drive from the front back to the capital

became a triumphant parade.

[crowd cheering]

[contemplative piano music playing]

[Pendas, in English] When Hitler returns from his victory in France,

when he returns to Berlin,

the celebrations are rapturous.

They won.

[Hitler, in German] The German Volk has proved, above all, its inner attitude

through its sons who are fighting on the battlefield.

Within weeks, they have beaten Germany's strongest military adversary

and have destroyed him.

Their spirit was and remains the spirit of the German Homeland!

[Bartov, in English] Hitler has delivered everything he promised,

and I suspect that if he had allowed elections at that point,

it would have been a sweeping victory.

[crowd cheering]

[radio announcer, in German] Security teams can hardly resist

the onslaught of the masses.

[uplifting orchestral music playing]

[Anne Berg, in English] The initial successes

really gave Hitler a public relations boost,

and so Germans felt that maybe this is going to be a quick war.

[man, in German] ♪ You're the dream who makes me happy ♪

♪ Who makes me happy tonight ♪

[crowd cheering]

♪ You are the rush That warmly embraces me ♪

♪ And enriches me greatly tonight ♪

♪ Don't you feel That you are the only one ♪

♪ For whom I would have to die tonight? ♪

[Hitler] The future belongs to the young nations

who will solve these questions.

We have undertaken these solutions, and we shall see to them.

[crowd cheering]

[intriguing music playing]

[Bartov, in English] At that point, Hitler's seriously considering,

uh, invading Britain.

There is an operation being planned,

which is supposed to be an amphibious invasion of Britain.

Hermann Goering, who is, among other things,

the commander of the Luftwaffe

and who was an ace pilot in World War I,

promises that they can have aerial superiority over Britain.

[radio announcer] British fighters speed to engage the foe.

In hundreds of desperate dogfights, the invaders are held at bay.

[artillery firing]

[jet engine roaring]

[explosion]

And they fail.

[engines roaring]

[Bartov] The Royal Air Force,

especially with its newly-produced Spitfire,

which are, uh, very good planes for that period,

manages not only to hold off the Luftwaffe, the German air force,

uh, but also to cause a great deal of damage to it.

And so with the Blitz,

that is the bombing of London and other cities,

the evacuation of children from London to the countryside...

[children chattering indistinctly]

...both stiffens the back of the British population

against the Germans...

[radio announcer] Never in history has an entire people

borne so frightful an ordeal so bravely.

Yes, England can take it!

[Bartov]...and, from the German perspective,

makes an invasion of Britain clearly impossible.

[explosion]

And now the question is, where do we go next?

[horns honking]

[Richie] When Hitler took power, he went about transforming the economy.

Hitler started the ball rolling, in a sense, by a sleight-of-hand,

creating a kind of economy

that made it look as if Germany was tremendously prosperous,

but a lot of it was done on borrowed money and printing money.

[spectators applauding]

[tense music playing]

[Richie] Even before the war starts,

Hitler decides that, in a way, in order to pay a lot of this back,

he's going to have to plunder, he's going to have to steal.

And one of the things he does is, of course, plan to plunder the resources

of the countries he's conquering.

And one of the other things he plans to steal is labor,

the labor of human beings,

which, if you put people to work for free,

then you don't have to pay your own workers.

[radio announcer, in German] Following the decree of the Führer and Chancellor

on the administration of the occupied Polish territories

of October 12th, 1939,

Jewish residents of the German Government

will be forced to work with immediate effect.

[in English] Poland was occupied as a colony,

not directly incorporated into the Reich,

and was turned into something called the General Government.

And it was overseen by, um, a civilian Nazi Party leader,

Hans Frank.

Hans Frank's job was to, uh, submit the Poles in this territory,

make sure that they did not, uh, rise up,

make sure that they did not form their own government.

They imagined the Poles as truly second-class inhabitants

who would be forced into a kind of slave subservience.

[no audible dialog]

[trial participant] Will you give your full name?

Hans Frank.

[somber string music playing]

[Seidl, in German] Witness, did Hitler give you any instructions

as to how you should carry out your administration as Governor General?

[Frank] Adolf Hitler instructed me to see to it

that this territory, which had been utterly devastated,

was somehow put into order again.

[Seidl] Did you yourself introduce forced labor in the General Government?

[Frank] Forced labor and compulsory labor service

were introduced by me in one of the first decrees,

but clearly, I had in mind only a labor service within the country

for repairing the damage caused by the war,

and for carrying out work necessary for the country itself.

[somber string music continues]

[Seidl] Witness, you have told us what you did for the welfare

of the population of the General Government.

The Prosecution, however, has charged you

with making a series of statements

which they found in your own diary,

which seem to contradict that.

How can you explain that contradiction?

[trial participant 2, in English] The documents, uh, are all,

or nearly all, I imagine, in German...

and can be put to the defendant in the course of his examination.

[Frank, in German] In the turmoil of a country in flames,

in the midst of a life-and-death struggle,

such words may easily be used.

Some of the words are terrible.

I admit that I was shocked at many of the words which I used.

[Eaton, in English] At Nuremberg, Hans Frank disavowed responsibility.

He claimed that as he was just a civilian governor of one territory,

that is of occupied Poland,

that he had played really no fundamental role.

That's utterly belied

by the fact that he was, uh, instrumental in setting up the ghettos,

in creating starvation, uh, conditions in the ghettos

and forced labor conditions in the ghettos,

and the very act of ghettoization was understood from the start

to be a form of murder.

[baby crying]

The idea was that they would die,

and the idea was they would die in very short order.

[child crying]

[intense music playing]

[Pendas] By the winter of 1940-41,

Hitler is in a situation

where he has, um, you know, won the war in the west,

except that he can't conquer Britain.

[Hirsch] France has fallen.

The Soviets have invaded and annexed the Baltic states

of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.

At this point, Hitler or Ribbentrop, they reach out to Stalin

and let him know that Molotov should come to... to Germany,

and, "We should have some more discussions."

And so, Molotov goes to Berlin in November 1940.

[moody music playing]

[Shirer] A dark, drizzling day, and Molotov arrived.

His reception extremely stiff and formal.

For more than a year,

ever since Ribbentrop signed the pact

which brought the two archenemies of this Earth together,

we've had rumors that the number two Bolshevik

would repay the visit.

[typewriter keys clacking]

[Eaton] And at stake was the division of Eastern Europe once again

between the Soviets and the Germans.

Issues were becoming tense

about the fate of the Baltics, about the fate of the Balkans.

[Hirsch] Molotov goes with a whole number of questions from Stalin

about what is it exactly that Hitler intends

for the shape of Europe?

Why is it that Germany has troops in Finland, right?

Why are they there? What are the intentions?

And really pushes, presses Ribbentrop and Hitler on these questions.

[Eaton] Whereas the first round of talks in 1939 had gone very well,

in this second round of talks,

the real conflicts between the two powers started to surface.

[Hirsch] And one of the things that Hitler is trying to convince Molotov

is that the war against Britain will soon be won.

And on the second day of the negotiations...

[air-raid sirens blaring]

...things are cut short

because there are British bombers over Berlin.

[Shirer] The British came over early that evening.

Shortly after nine o'clock, the air-raid sirens began to whine,

and soon, you could hear the thunder of the flak guns,

and in between them, the hum of the bombers overhead.

[Richie] Hitler's meeting with Molotov is a little bit of an embarrassment

because Hermann Goering has promised

that no Western planes would ever hit Berlin.

[Hirsch] And Ribbentrop, he's trying to continue to make the point

that the war against Britain will soon be won.

At which point, Molotov apparently makes a quip about,

"Then why are we sitting here in this bunker?"

So Molotov leaves,

and it's really shortly after that

that Hitler begins to initiate war plans against the Soviet Union.

[foreboding music playing]

[Bartov] Hitler was dedicated to creating German living space in the east.

For Hitler, it was impossible not to attack the Soviet Union.

Again, the question was when.

[foreboding music continues]

[traffic sounds]

[Wick] William L. Shirer has kind of reached the end of the line for him.

He can't deal with the censorship.

Mind you, the British are now bombing Berlin.

They're now bombing other German cities.

[artillery fires]

[Wick] There are nights of bombing

where shrapnel's falling all over the place,

and him running across parking lots.

It becomes intolerable.

At some point that fall,

he begins to fear he's gonna get arrested.

[van Dyk] The thing that he really wants to get out are his diaries.

If he's smart and he wants to play it safe,

he should destroy them.

But he doesn't want to do that.

It's valuable information that he wants to get out.

Things he wasn't able to say on the air, things he observed...

[Shirer] For weeks,

I had mulled over how to get my diaries safely out of Berlin.

At some moments, I had thought I ought to destroy them before leaving.

There was enough in them to get me hanged if the Gestapo ever discovered them,

but I wanted very much to preserve them if I could.

Suddenly, the solution became clear.

It was risky, but it was worth a try.

I laid out the diaries in two big suitcases I had bought.

Over them, I placed a number of my broadcast scripts,

each page of which had been stamped by the military and civilian censors

as "passed for broadcast."

On top, I put a few maps I had picked up from friends on the general staff.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Wick] His plan is to put layers of old broadcast notes,

which were all approved by the censors,

so they wouldn't particularly care about that.

On top of that goes some military maps,

and he thought that maybe they would take those and not dig any deeper.

So he actually goes to Gestapo headquarters.

And they open it up, and they see the maps.

They take the maps.

He's scared.

[Shirer] "What else you got there?" one of the men said,

putting his paw on the pile of papers.

"The texts of my broadcasts," I said.

"Every page, as you can see,

stamped for approval by the High Command and the two ministries."

Both men studied the censors' stamps. I could see they were impressed.

They poked a little deeper, each man now working a suitcase.

Soon, they would reach the diaries.

I now wished... I now wished I had not come.

I felt myself beginning to perspire.

I had deliberately got myself into this jam.

What a fool.

"You reported on the German army?" one of the agents looked up to ask.

"All the way to Paris and the Armistice at Compiègne," I said.

"It will go down in history."

[inaudible]

[Shirer] That apparently clinched it.

"Okay," one of them said,

obviously proud of his one word of English...

and without a word, sealed the two bags.

I was free at last.

[radio announcer] And here is William L. Shirer,

CBS correspondent recently returned from Berlin.

Mr. Shirer.

[Shirer] Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia tonight

are fighting it out on a 2,000-mile front,

stretching from the Arctic Sea to the Black Sea.

Germany struck today against her late friend and helpmate

with the same kind of lightning force

which she unleashed on the Western Front a year ago.

[uneasy music playing]

[jet engines droning]

[bombs exploding]

[Bartov] When the Germans invade the Soviet Union

on the 22nd of June, 1941,

the German army numbers over three million soldiers.

They have about 3,000 tanks,

about 600,000 horses, close to 3,000 aircraft,

and they invade along a vast front,

from the Baltic all the way to the Black Sea.

Barbarossa is chosen as the name

because this was a medieval German emperor,

and he's a kind of mythical figure for the Nazis.

[artillery fires]

[Bartov] The Red Army has two, two and a half million troops,

has a lot of artillery.

And so what you have here

is the largest military confrontation in military history.

[dramatic string music playing]

[Eaton] With the launching of Operation Barbarossa,

Hitler moved his, uh, military headquarters

to the swampy marshes of southern East Prussia

in this region called Masuria.

The Wolf's Lair was this elaborate set of underground bunkers

and conference rooms and dining halls.

[Richie] This was a very isolated, very desolate,

uh, very unpleasant place with a terrible climate.

Full of mosquitoes and bugs in the summer,

deathly cold and damp in the winter.

[Eaton] And Hitler was going to carry out

what he thought was going to be a few weeks campaign in this Wolf's Lair.

Hitler was wildly confident

that the Soviet Union would collapse in a matter of weeks.

[Browning] Hitler gives a speech to his generals

that this war will not be a conventional war.

This war will not be fought like the war we fought in Western Europe.

This will be a culmination of his race war for Lebensraum.

[Eaton] Barbarossa was designed to be brutal from the start.

It was designed to show no mercy.

- [gun fires] - [body thuds]

[somber music playing]

[Bartov] It's a war against Germany's military and racial enemies.

It's a genocidal war.

[Shirer] Hitler the conqueror, deliberately, out of his own madness,

decided to turn on his friend and ally, the Soviet Union.

It led to his doom.

From then on, the road for Adolf Hitler stretched down to utter disaster.

The ensuing bloody nightmare has no parallel in history.

[plaintive piano music playing]