All language subtitles for adolf.hitlers.war.s01e01.720p.web.h264-skyfire_track3_[eng]

In the 1920s, Adolf Hitler
promoted the idea of Lebensraum -

living space.

The German population was, he said,
"Too great in every sense

"to be confined within its
present borders."

And he knew that Germany
could spread in only one direction.

"We National Socialists are ceasing
the endless German movement

"to the south and west and levelling
our gaze at the land in the east."

That war to seize the land in the
east was a war of unfathomable cost.

It was Adolf Hitler's war.

A geopolitical faultline runs
through the heart of Europe.

The Ottoman Empire, the Russian
Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire

and the German Empire once occupied
the land

from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

When they crumbled, new countries,
rashly fashioned from the rubble,

created the combat zone into which
Adolf Hitler

sent his armies to claim
living space,

destroy Bolshevism,

and cleanse Europe of Jews and other
victims of his prejudice.

Berlin, November the 5th, 1937.

At a meeting with the heads of his
armed forces,

Adolf Hitler explained the Nazi
programme.

Colonel Friedrich Hossbach
took the minutes.

Hitler dismissed the idea
that Germany

could ever be self-sufficient
behind its present borders.

"The only remedy lay in the
acquisition

"of greater living space.

"The space necessary can only
be sought in Europe.

"There had never been, in former
times, spaces without a master,

"and there were none today."

"The attacker always comes up
against the possessor."

"The aim of German policy
is to make secure and to preserve

"the racial community.

"It is therefore a question
of space."

"The question for Germany runs.

"Where can she achieve the greatest
gain at the lowest cost?"

Hitler took the first step
towards answering that question

in Fuhrerbefehle,
or Hitler directive,

Number one issued on the last day
of August, 1939.

"Since the situation in Germany's
eastern frontier

"has become intolerable and all
political possibilities

"of peaceful settlement have been
exhausted,

"I have decided upon a solution
by force."

The last Fuhrerbefehle, Number 74,

was issued on April 15th, 1945,

bookending the long, bloody war
on which Hitler was determined.

"I am now 50.

"I would rather have the war now
than when I am 55 or 60."

In a war where civilian casualties

greatly outnumbered
those of the battlefield,

the cost of the fighting presents
an extraordinary comparison.

For every two Americans killed,

Britain and her Empire lost
three people.

The Japanese - 12.

The Germans - 22, of whom 19
were killed on the Eastern Front.

And the Soviet Union?

184.

All the time people are trying
to mobilise us for things.

Why is it that some ideas
take hold and others don't?

And this is an instance where

the experience and a leadership
are in place

to mobilise people in a
particular way.

The particular way in which,
according to Hitler,

Germany could achieve the greatest
gain at the lowest cost

was to go east.

Britain and France tried
to check Hitler's ambition

through concession and compromise.

They failed.

"One does not obtain freedom
through begging or cheating,

"nor through labour and
industriousness either,

"but exclusively through fighting."

A few days after Hitler's foreign
minister

signed the notorious non-aggression
pact

with the right's least likely
partner,

the Bolsheviks of the Soviet Union,

67 Wehrmacht divisions
broke into Poland from three sides.

"I shall give you a propagandist
reason for starting the war,

"no matter whether it is plausible
or not.

"The victor will not be asked
afterwards

"whether he told the truth."

"It is the intention of the Fuhrer
and Goring

"to destroy and exterminate
the Polish people."

Two weeks after the German invasion,

and as allowed under the secret
provisions

of the non-aggression pact,

the Soviet Union invaded Poland
through the fourth side.

Poland, in historian
Michael Burleigh's memorable phrase,

was "crucified between two thieves."

The Nazi German was not only
one aggressor in 1939,

but after two weeks, September 17th,

the Soviet Union,
our second neighbour,

attacked Poland from the east.

The two invading armies came
to a halt

roughly on the line of the
River Bug.

There they divided Poland amongst
themselves and faced each other.

It was really a very big surprise.

A lot of Polish soldiers,
they have no idea what to do

in this situation, because they have
no idea what Russians will do,

what Soviets will do,
in this situation.

But the Red Army have one order -

they have to capture the oldest
soldiers.

Warsaw capitulated on
September 27th.

On the 28th, Radio Warsaw played
Chopin's Funeral March.

Fighting in Poland had lasted
for four weeks.

But very suddenly it becomes
clear,

and even more clear after Warsaw
falls,

there's a difference in which the
Nazi occupiers treat Poles and Jews.

And people start feeling
the differences between themselves.

Jews are immediately singled out.

There is both Poles and Jews
persecuted,

but they are persecuted in a
different way.

Jewish writers begin to write about
what's happening to them,

because they know that this
situation is different,

that this persecution is different.

They're initially right about
the pogrom.

They say this is the longest
pogrom in Jewish history.

At the end of November,

the people of the Soviet occupied
territories of eastern Poland

became Soviet citizens by decree.

Instructions from Moscow defining
anti-Soviet elements

included stamp collectors,

because it was assumed that they had
foreign contacts.

291,513 Polish citizens were
packed off to the gulag.

And in April 1940, 21,892 Poles,

mainly Army officers, were shot by
Soviet killers

at sites including the Katyn Forest.

As the Soviet Union absorbed its
conquest of eastern Poland,

Germany did likewise in the west.

Germany's plan was to absorb
western Poland,

thought capable of Germanisation,

and exploit the central part called
the general government

where Hans Frank, formerly Hitler's
lawyer,

was installed as governor general.

Frank proclaimed that Poland...

"is a nation governed by the demands
and desires of the Third Reich.

"The Poles have no rights
whatsoever."

By late September 1939,

Reinhardt Heydrich, founder of the
Sicherheitsdienst,

the security service,
and according to Hitler,

"the man with the iron heart,"
could boast...

"Of the Polish upper classes,
a maximum of 3% are still present."

Heinrich Himmler believed
that with the murders,

the idea of a Polish nation would
simply disappear.

It did not.

Poland was defeated,
but it did not surrender.

Polish government began to
operate in exile, first in France,

then in London, in Great Britain.

In September 1939, the Polish
underground state,

which was fully subordinated to the
government in exile, was created.

And it was, on the one hand,
military part with a home army.

It was administration. It was
education. There were media.

There were courts issuing verdicts
against collaborators.

It was well-organised structure.

Polish created secret school
organisation.

Even I know a few cases that people
defended their PhD thesis

at secret universities.

Also, there was a secret parliament
consisting of four main parties.

The pseudoscience of race is the
only constant in Nazi ideology.

How are we to understand it?

Mein Kampf, "My Struggle,"

is Hitler's sprawling
part-autobiography,

of which historian Alan Bullock
said,

"The indelible impression left by
its 700 pages

"is the vulgarity of Hitler's mind."

In the book, Hitler describes an
incident in Vienna where he...

"suddenly came upon a being clad in
a long caftan with black curls.

"'Is this also a Jew?'
was my first thought.

"Is this also a German?"

It was a Hasidic Jew whose curls
interpret a verse in Leviticus.

"You shall not round off the corner
of your head,

"and you shall not destroy the edge
of your beard."

The defining characteristics of the
Hasidic movement would be more of a

focus on the emotional rather than
the intellectual.

On mysticism and having a connection
to God.

Centuries of expulsion had shifted
Jewish life to Eastern Europe,

where the Hasidic movement
that so startled Hitler had begun.

The result was that with the
invasion of Poland,

the number of Jews under Nazi
control

jumped from 300,000 to 3,000,000.

But to Adolf Hitler, they were not
three million.

They were one enemy.

A race.

There's no way that they can
integrate into us,

because I've closed the conceptual
boundaries

by creating this fiction of race.

Hitler was not interested
in the 2,000 years of anti-Judaism

that branded Jews as Christ killers.

It was a mistake, Hitler said,
to think of Jews as...

"a religious community,
when actually they are a race."

Before it was, more or less,
traditional, religious anti-Judaism.

But in the end of 19th, beginning of
20th century,

there's a switch from religious to
racial anti-Semitism.

From religious to racial, it was
extremely dangerous physically

for Jews.

Between 1933 and 1943,

the Nazis enacted some 400
anti-Jewish laws and decrees.

Most restricted movement, activity,
access to professions.

But some on the list
Victor Klemperer compiled

in June 1942 are less
comprehensible.

A ban on going to the barber.
The surrender of all dogs and cats.

A ban on purchasing flowers.

If you see a Jew caring for an
animal, caring for flowers,

showing human emotions, it begins
to re-humanise them.

Rats probably don't care for pets.

Rats don't care for flowers,
tend to them. Humans do.

And if you see Jews doing this,
it re-humanises them.

Jews were, in the words of diarist
Chaim Kaplan

who would die in Treblinka...

"Driven out of the society
of the human race."

In the cities and towns, from the
very beginning,

Nazis start to create a so-called
ghetto for Jewish population.

"The time has come to drive
this rabble into ghettos,

"and then epidemics will erupt
and they'll all croak."

The first driving of Jews
into a ghetto was at Piotrkow

in October 1939.

Lodz, the Germans renamed
it Litzmannstadt,

was sealed off on May 1st, 1940.

Warsaw, which had the largest Jewish
population of any European city,

enclosed half a million Jews
by November.

So, we have this city, because it is
a city.

There is up to 400,000 people
who all locked up

in a relatively small part of
Warsaw.

We could say waiting, because they
don't really know what's happening.

"Black melancholy rained
in our courtyard."

Under these living conditions,
with five, ten people

sharing one room, there's a
health crisis, obviously.

There are diseases.

"It is a joy to finally be able to
physically attack the Jewish race."

"The more that die, the better."

In November, Colonel Hellmuth Stieff
wrote to his wife.

"The extermination of entire races,
including women and children,

"is only possible by a sub-humanity

"that no longer deserves the name
German.

"I am ashamed to be a German."

Hellmuth Stieff, Hitler called
him...

"a poisonous little dwarf..."

later conspired against the Fuhrer
and was hanged on August 8th, 1944.

The first mass killing of Jews
in Warsaw

took place before the end of
November.

In a report that reached Hitler,
General Walter Petzel,

commanding 1st Army Corps,

complained of public shootings
where...

"selection is entirely arbitrary,

"and the conduct of the executions,
in many cases, disgusting."

On December 7th, Hitler issued a
decree which instructed that...

"persons endangering German security
vanish without a trace

"into the night and fog."

Night and fog, "nacht und nebel,"

would soon blanket Eastern Europe.

"We cannot shoot 2,500,000 Jews.

"Neither can we poison them."

A van was set up as a mobile
gas chamber.

The words
Kaiser's Kaffee Geschaft,

Kaiser's Coffee Company,
were painted on its side.

Judged a success, by 1942

eight gas vans were operating in
Belarus alone.

In 1940, Walther Von Brauchitsch,
head of the army,

described such actions as...

"ethno-political measures ordered by
the Fuhrer

"for the security of the German
living space in Poland."

Living space - Lebensraum -

was the reason Germany gave
for violating Polish sovereignty.

The Soviet Union offered
something equally self-serving.

"The annihilation of Poland
would mean one fewer

"bourgeois fascist state
to contend with."

With Poland's fate settled,
Hitler turned his thoughts

to what his next move should be.

During the fighting in Poland,
France and Britain

had 100 divisions facing
23 German divisions.

They had declared war,
but they did not attack.

And nothing had disturbed the peace
of Western Europe

since the invasion.

But the fact remained that Britain
and France had declared war.

To the consternation of his
generals,

Hitler decided to deal with this
threat

before turning to the war he wanted.

It looked that, up to a point,
Hitler didn't want war

against Great Britain.

He thought that Britain was a very
good colonial state.

In one of history's most startling
debacles,

16 days after the invasion of
France, Belgium,

Luxembourg and the Netherlands,

the evacuation of Allied troops from
Dunkirk began.

On June 10th, Italy declared war
on Britain and France.

And on the day the Wehrmacht marched
into Paris, an ultimatum for Molotov

was delivered to the Lithuanian
government,

which was assured that,
irrespective of its response,

Soviet troops would invade
the following day.

And ten divisions did.

A day later, the Soviet Union
occupied the other Baltic republics.

"Slavism is spreading.
Our price for Russia's neutrality."

In mid-June, the Soviet Union
deported 100,000 people

from the Baltic states.

More before, more after, for often
risible reasons.

One woman was murdered because,
according to the official report...

"she was caught singing Latvian
folk songs."

A Lithuanian professor wrote
in his diary...

"Most of the people are simply
craving for the Germans to come.

"And then the real slaughtering
of the Jews could start."

On July 13th, Germany's bombing
offensive struck

against airfields and factories
in England.

By the end of October,

the battle for control of the skies
over Britain had been decided.

And Hitler abandoned plans
for an invasion.

He turned east.

"With Russia smashed, Britain's last
hope would then be shattered.

"Germany will then be master
of Europe."

On October 1st, the German Army
commenced Operation Otto -

constructing and upgrading
road and rail communications

to the Soviet border, and Poles were
reminded

that the produce of their farms was
for the use of the Reich.

When we look at the countryside,
we see peasants that are once more

being robbed. Their harvest is taken
from them.

They are required to deliver
a certain amount of corn, potatoes,

whatever, and once they can't
deliver it,

the Germans don't care why they
can't deliver it.

It's not, "Well, there was a lot of
rain,

"so we couldn't bring in the
harvest."

No, I mean, for the Germans,
it's just,

"It's not there, so we'll punish
you."

"The miller Niedzinski has acted
against the regulations

"for ensuring food supplies, so his
mill has been burned down."

In November, at a ceremony in
Vienna, Hungary joined the Axis.

Romania, which would contribute more
troops to the war

than any other Axis partner,
signed the Tripartite Pact.

Slovakia followed.
Bulgaria joined in March.

Tsar Boris III signing up

from the day the German troops
entered his country.

The popular image of the eastern
campaign is of Germany acting alone,

but these allies added
hundreds of thousands of troops

to the Axis order of battle.

Not that Hitler was inclined
to acknowledge their contribution.

On December 18th,
Hitler Directive 21 began.

"The German armed forces must be
prepared,

"even before the conclusion of war
against England,

"to crush Soviet Russia in a rapid
campaign."

Preparations for a rapid campaign,
Operation Barbarossa,

were to be completed by May 15th,

and the final objective, the 11-page
directive explained, was...

"to erect a barrier against
Asiatic Russia."

The A-A line is approximately
2,700km long,

more or less the equivalent of
New York to Los Angeles,

or Paris to Istanbul.

And Nizhny Novgorod,
then known as Gorky,

sits in the middle of the line,
more than 2,000km from Berlin.

KUDRYASHOV: Hitler and his generals
tried to persuade themselves

that they would destroy the
Red Army near the borders,

and that would take a month
or so.

And then there will be two or three
decisive battles.

And if you study Barbarossa plan,

you will be surprised how vague
it is.

Hitler understood that Barbarossa
would, as he said...

"make the world hold its breath."

All the advantages
were on the German side.

The best armour, the best officers,
the best military culture.

Between January and June 1941,

17,000 trains ferried German troops
towards the Soviet border.

In March, Hitler addressed 250 of
his senior commanders

at a planning conference.

It was a part of the great campaign,
which started on the eve of the war,

to explain to a German soldier how
should he fight Russians.

And he basically explains
this will be a war of annihilation.

We have to understand this is going
to be a different war

from the war in the West.

"The war against Russia cannot
be fought in knightly fashion.

"The struggle is one of ideologies
and racial differences

"and will have to be waged
with unprecedented, unmerciful

"and unrelenting hardness.

"Any German soldier who breaks
international law will be pardoned."

General Jodl, hanged for war crimes
in 1946,

noted broad agreement that

"following conquest of the
Soviet Union...

"the Jewish Bolshevik intelligentsia
must be eliminated."

KAY: This endorsement
from the highest levels,

this idea that we're not going to
punish you if you commit these acts,

this created an atmosphere
in which it became routine, almost,

to commit what were, in effect,
horrific acts.

In October 1940, playing catch up
with his fellow dictator,

Mussolini, with implications for the
forthcoming campaign in the east,

had sent his troops to invade
Greece.

Less than a month later, the Greeks
defeated the Italian 9th Army.

When British forces arrived
in Greece,

Hitler, partly from loyalty and
partly from concern

for his southern flank, was obliged
to aid his ally,

smashing through the resistance

that had so embarrassed the Italian
invaders.

"Even now, our racial creed
is penetrating nation after nation."

In March 1941, President Roosevelt
signed the Lend-Lease Act,

and the Wehrmacht began aligning
forces against their start positions

for the invasion of the USSR,

the armour of Army Group South
moving to Krakow.

Also in March, a document proposing
a gesamtlosung der Judenfrage -

a comprehensive solution to the
Jewish question.

It would be developed into the
Endlosung - final solution -

was presented to
Reichsmarschall Goring,

who had commissioned it.

In this way, the war behind the war
was embossed on the coming fight,

which minutes of a German planning
meeting noted...

"can only be waged if the entire
Wehrmacht is fed from Russia."

"Many tens of millions of people
will become superfluous

"and will have to die or migrate
to Siberia."

By May 10th, plans for
Operation Barbarossa were complete.

They were based on the best
information

provided by German intelligence,

which calculated that the USSR's
deep reserve

comprised about 30 major
military formations.

The true number was closer to 140.

Messages intercepted by British
intelligence

confirmed that Axis formations would
be in place by May 20th.

Earlier, the USSR's most reliable
spy, Richard Sorge in Tokyo,

had told Moscow that Germany would
launch its invasion

between June 20th and 22nd,

one of 80 warnings that Stalin
received and rejected.

According to one of his biographers,

the intelligence Stalin believed
useful

was the price of fleeces in Berlin.

He did not believe that Germany
would attack the Soviet Union

without an adequate supply
of sheepskin coats.

On the shortest night of the year,

some sources claim Hitler
telephoned Mussolini.

Others that he wrote to him.

Perhaps he did both.

He said... "Months of anxious
deliberation are ending

"in the hardest decision of
my life."

At dinner, the Fuhrer played
a gramophone record for his guests,

Albert Speer and Admiral Raeder.

It was Les Preludes by Franz Liszt,
and Hitler said it was to be...

"our victory fanfare for the Russian
campaign."

That night, a German commander
reported...

"the Russians are manning their
posts, which are fully illuminated.

"Apparently, they suspect nothing."

A communist worker from Berlin,
Alfred Liskow,

swam across the River Pruth

to warn his Soviet comrades that his
army unit

had been issued with its invasion
orders.

Georgy Zhukov advised Moscow,

and Stalin ordered Liskow shot for
disinformation.

But because the comrade's
information was correct,

there wasn't enough time to
shoot him.

Walther Von Brauchitsch,
commander-in-chief, predicted...

"Fierce border battles anticipated,

"duration up to four weeks.

"Afterwards, only minor resistance
is to be expected."

They foresee very heavy border
battles,

where these large Soviet armies
concentrated near the border

will be encircled, largely in the
first round of encirclement,

and then the exploitation begins.

Barbarossatag, June 22nd, 1941,

is one of history's great
punctuation points.

At 3:30 in the morning, a Soviet
forward position radioed...

"We're being fired on.
What are we to do?"

MAZUR: Since June, 1941,
the situation changed,

because one of our aggressors,
one of our enemies,

I mean the Soviet Union, became an
ally of our Western allies.

For Polish leaders, it was a very
big dilemma. What to do?

Relations between Poland and the
Soviet Union were brought back.

Formally, they were not our allies.
They were only allies of our allies.

German bombers struck 66 Soviet
aerodromes,

destroying much of the Red air force
on the ground.

Bombs also fell on Kovno, Minsk,
Rovno, Odessa,

Sevastopol and Libava.

A lot of military planes,
a lot of tanks,

were destroyed at the very first day
of the German invasion

of the Soviet Union.

On June 22nd, Joseph Goebbels
broadcast an announcement

that Hitler had written
the previous day.

"The hour has come in which it is
necessary to go into action

"against the conspiracy of Jewish
Anglo-Saxon warmongers

"and Jewish powerholders of the
Bolshevik centre in Moscow."

General Erhard Raus, commanding
Sixth Panzer Division, said...

"The German soldier who crossed into
Russian territory

"felt that he entered a different
world."

VERSHININ: They were kind of
crusaders.

They wanted to bring European
civilisation here.

They turned into criminals which
fought Soviet people,

which burned whole villages,
which were to kill women, children.

Three giant thrusts launched
151 German divisions

supported by 40 from Axis partners
on a north-south front

of about 2,000km, aiming initially
for Leningrad, Kiev and Smolensk.

"In the east, a process will repeat
itself

"as in the conquest of America.

"Our Mississippi must be the Volga.

"What India was for England,

"the territories of Russia will be
for us."

The plan, insofar as the notoriously
ad-lib Nazi regime had plans,

was to dismember Russia in Europe,

creating four political entities.

The first of these, Ostland,

the three Baltic states and part of
Belarus,

were judged, like western Poland,
capable of Germanisation.

The story in Moscow was pandemonium.

When Zhukov phoned the Kremlin,
he was told that Stalin was asleep.

"Wake him immediately.
The Germans are bombing our cities."

For days there was confusion.

Stalin and Beria, Malenkov
and Molotov and Mikoyan

dashed about picking up and slamming
down telephones

as seemingly every link in the
chain of command,

from Moscow to the fighting front,
snapped.

Stalin, according to Molotov...

"was in a very agitated state.

"He didn't curse, but he wasn't
quite himself."

By nightfall on the first day,

Italy and Romania had declared war
on the Soviet Union.

Finland joined in after four days,
Hungary after five.

A disaster was unfolding which would
not stop unfolding.

STAHEL: Panzer groups are driving
deep into the Soviet Union,

but that doesn't mean that all
the Soviet armies behind them

have surrendered or have broken.

There's a lot of rear-area fighting
and soldiers have to react to this.

And this is where those lines,
those classic lines

of how we understand a soldier's
role, are being blurred.

They are very much targeting people
who aren't classic enemies.

Soviet Order 246 stipulated that
those encircled

must fight to the last.

"Those who prefer to surrender

"are to be destroyed
by any means available

"while their families are to be
deprived of all assistance."

Stalin took time to accept
that he had been duped,

and a couple of days of
disappearance

to test the mechanism of power

and learn that he had not lost
authority.

His gang went to see him at his
dacha in Kuntsevo,

and told him they proposed setting
up a state defence committee.

Stalin asked...
"With whom at its head?"

And Molotov and Malenkov and Beria
said...

"You, Comrade Stalin."

VERSHININ: In this episode, Stalin's
team played up his role.

Molotov was responsible for
foreign policy.

Mikoyan was responsible for
food provision,

for lend-lease, for trade.

Malenkov was responsible
for heavy industry,

for aircraft construction.
They played like a single team.

German confidence had been buoyed
by many things.

France had collapsed.

Russians were subhuman...

"Little and weak peasant people."

The Red Army had fumbled badly
in the Winter War against Finland

and lost leading officers
to Stalin's purges.

General Jodl, chief of the Army's
operational staff,

expressed a widely-shared belief.

"The Russian colossus will prove to
be a pig's bladder.

"Prick it and it will burst."

It was problematic for the German
military

that the prejudice of Nazi
race theory

was riveted onto their planning.

As an illiterate rabble
of Slav peasants,

the Red Army would collapse.

But because it was not, it did not.

That idea of easy victory
in the east,

was shared by almost all his
entourage.

By his generals, by his diplomats,
by everyone.

And some were like, it is so easy to
just throw it, just push it

and that's it.

But one thing is to believe
in something.

The other one is actually to do it,
to realise your plans.

Towards the end of July, you then
get a radicalisation

of orders being issued further down
the chain of command.

An increase in the manpower in the
rear areas in the Soviet Union

to combat partisans and Red Army
soldiers who have been cut off

from their units.

And the main increase in manpower is
the SS battalions

who were sent to the east.

On June 23rd, Hitler left Berlin
for his Rastenburg headquarters.

Two days later, Goebbels
wrote in his diary...

"I'm refraining from publishing
big maps of Russia.

"The huge areas may frighten
the public."

In those initial weeks of
Barbarossa,

you do record a sense of shock,

even for men who have fought in
previous campaigns.

They are shocked by the violence.
By the violence at the Front,

the fact that Soviet soldiers aren't
giving up.

By the violence behind the rear.

What contributes to this saturation
of violence

in the occupied Eastern territories
is, on the one hand,

an ideology that was shared to
varying extents

by a large proportion of the
occupation troops.

So that doesn't mean they are all
diehard Nazis,

but it does mean that they share
some of the goals

and some of the political
convictions of the regime.

In the war behind the war,
Lithuanian militiamen,

encouraged by German officers,

murdered 1,500 Jews in Kovno.

In July, police in Riga,
under German command,

slaughtered 400 Jews.

The turning point when it comes to

what we now refer to as the
Holocaust, or the Shoah.

And there is actually a state of
panic

among the military and political
leaderships at this time,

and a sense of fear.
A fear of failure.

Shoah is Hebrew for catastrophe.

In Latvia, Sheyna Gram wrote
in her diary...

"All the Jews in Dvinskaya Street
are chased out beyond the cemetery"

"and shot there. This is terrible."

"We did not expect things
to end this way."

On August 9th, Sheyna Gram's
family were murdered.

Sheyna was not killed until a week
later

when the Einsatzgruppe commander
had had enough of her.

She was 15 years old.

A few days after the invasion,
Pravda was describing the conflict

as a "Fatherland war."

Significantly, the Russian
people were not being told

that they were defending
the Revolution,

but that they were defending
Russia.

That day, ominously, Von Manstein's
surging 56th motorised corps,

had to pause at the
Western Dvina River

to allow the infantry to catch up.

So, how many overall of the
148 German divisions

in the Operation Barbarossa,

how many of those are motorised
or Panzer divisions?

Only about 30.
The rest were infantry divisions.

So the vast bulk, the real backbone
of the German army,

is coming at a much slower speed.

Army Group Centre,
advancing towards Minsk,

was commanded by
General Fedor Von Bock,

who recognised an opportunity to
bypass Minsk,

accelerating his advance on Moscow.

But because it seemed to the Fuhrer
that blitzkrieg was being repeated,

he insisted Von Bock continue
the attack on Minsk.

But all was not as it seemed.

Just six days into the campaign,
Seventh Panzer Division,

spearheading Army Group Centre's
push,

reported a 50% loss of Mach two and
Mach three tanks,

and an unsustainable 75% loss of
Mach four models.

STAHEL: You need to flush out these
engines. You need spare parts.

Well, that all happens back
in Germany.

That's what you've done in the past
campaigns. Go back to the factories.

The planning is not there. This is
predicated on big border battles,

and that hasn't won the war for us.
Now what do we do?

Losses, mainly due to mechanical
failure,

were reported plus or minus
throughout the eastern army,

the ostia, and there was still a
long way to go.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media