All language subtitles for adolf.hitlers.war.s01e04.720p.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.

British Intelligence and a complete
battle plan taken from a downed
German aircraft

warned the Soviet leadership

that Hitler had backed Plan Blue -
the attack on the Caucasus.

Joseph Stalin dismissed the
information

and waited for the assault on
Moscow to be resumed.

One more mistake.

To coincide with the launch of
Plan Blue

Heinrich Himmler ordered "total
cleansing of the Jewish population
of the General Government."

From December 31st 1942,

no persons of Jewish origin

may remain within the General
Government.

These measures are required with a
view

to the necessary ethnic division

of races and peoples for the
New Order in Europe.

Within two months,

more than a quarter of a million
Jews had been slaughtered in
Treblinka's gas chambers.

The man in charge, a physician
named Irmfried Eberl,

was sacked for inefficiency.

His failure to quickly dispose of
the corpses

caused panic on the arriving trains.

Treblinka's new commander,
Franz Stangl,

introduced reforms

that included construction of a
mock station -

a stage set, so that the victims
alighting

were not at once alarmed.

With a sign saying 'Treblinka'.

Looking exactly like a German
railroad station.

A replica, with sign boards.

The station clock was painted on.

For a period of time, certainly
disciplines like psychology

were thinking about explaining what
went on during World War II and
the Holocaust

as to do with psycho-pathology.

To do with extremism.

To do with political force. And
all of that, to some degree, has a
role to play.

But, increasingly, I think, people
are facing this idea

that there were mindsets within
Germany

that were broadly supportive of the
activities during World War II.

But as the power of the SS and the
brutality of the regime rose,

voices were heard

warning against what Hans Frank
called,

"Police state ideals."

Frank was stripped of his party
honours

and on July 22nd

Hitler addressed the concerns of his
former lawyer.

Let me issue a word of warning to
our legal gentlemen.

They should refrain from
attempting to impose their mania
for regulations

on our administration of our
Eastern Territories.

And yes, it was a dictatorship. But
there were certain ways to protest
on popular policies.

These protests were directed, not
against Adolf Hitler,

but against lower ranking Nazi
officials.

And there almost became a saying in
Germany, at the time,

"Surely the Fuhrer doesn't know
about this, otherwise he wouldn't
allow it to happen."

The vanguard for the first part of
Plan Blue -

the advance in to the Caucuses -

was the 23rd Panzer Division,
recently transferred from France.

Soviet Aircraft dropped leaflets,
which read...

"Welcome to the Soviet Union. The
gay Parisian life is now over."

Blue One, the attack on Voronezh,

was to initiate a cascade of
conquest.

Blue Two would strike towards
Rostov.

By July 7th, Voronezh had fallen

and the Offzier was ordered to turn
South.

The Red Army in the south collapsed.

Axis formations flooded the area.

The confidence this generated

encouraged Hitler to divide his
forces.

I mean, ultimately, it's also this
hubris

that as this campaign is developing

and Soviet Army's are falling back,

the plan changes.

You see a German army now being
split -

army group south is being split in
to A and B.

They're going to try and achieve
these objectives simultaneously.

From his new HQ - Werwolf
in Vinnytsia -

an ill chosen site with heat,
humidity and swarming mosquitoes

adding to the severe influenza

from which Hitler was reportedly
suffering,

the Fuhrer issued Directive Number
45,

which committed the newly divided
force to an advance on divergent
Axis.

South, to the oilfields of the
Caucasus

and East to Stalingrad.

Not even three weeks in to this
operation, the 4th Panzer Army

is down to 30% of its establishment
strength.

That is catastrophic for a long
campaign.

Because it's not just about
achieving these objectives,

you've got to hold them,
theoretically.

Franz Halder, Chief of the Army
High Command,

wrote in his diary that...

The chronic tendency to underrate
enemy capabilities

is gradually assuming grotesque
proportions.

The fault lay with what Halder
called, "this so-called leadership."

And its...

Total lack of any understanding.

As for the ridiculous 100 million
Slavs,

we will mould the best of them as
we see fit.

And we will isolate the rest of
them in their own pigsties.

On August 19th, Group B began the
assault on Stalingrad where

Timoshenko, in overall command,
asked for re-enforcements.

If they sold Divisions in the
market, I'd buy you one or two.

But unfortunately they don't.

On the 21st, elements moved to
within 65km of the Volga.

All that the USSR had was the
People's Commissariat of Defence
Order.

Not a step back.

Helped by those detachments,

rooting out defeatism and shooting
deserters,

the order worked.

Other initiatives also strengthened
the Russian people.

A large order from the USSR had
been received in Great Britain.

It was for gold braid which was,
according to Stalin...

Not just decoration,

but also about order and discipline.

For the first time since the
revolution,

officers were to be addressed by
rank.

They were to wear the insignia of
rank.

The gallantry awards of
pre-revolutionary Russia

were re-introduced.

Western people, they will tell you,
because it was totalitarian system

because everybody was afraid,

because everybody had the someone,
the soldier with the gun.

And if you don't fight the
Germans, they will fight you.

But, you know, that in reality,
it's impossible.

Of course, Soviet Union, it was the
country with a lot of contradiction

and, of course, the Soviet project
has failed.

As you see, the Soviet Union
doesn't exist anymore.

But, I think, some basic ideas of
Soviet Union

worked very good and during this war

we see the result.

On August 23rd, the Germans reached
Stalingrad's northernmost suburb.

On August 27th, Stalin - the Supreme
Commander -

appointed General Georgy Zhukov,
the 42-year-old son of a shoemaker,

Deputy Supreme Commander,

and sent him to Stalingrad.

Stalin liked Zhukov, because Zhukov
was very obedient

and very straightforward.

And he was also cruel.

The extent to which any one
commander can sit there

and through some stroke of genius
go left or go right

and somehow solve the problem and
win the battle -

people invest a lot in this, as
though the Commander is somehow

a great man standing on the field,
looking and saying,

"Where do we employ the last
division to finally win the battle?"

But, if in a battle of material, and
that is largely what the Eastern
Front is,

it's a battle of attrition.

As the war continues beyond 1941,

you don't, any longer, have this
great operational predominance of
the Wehrmacht.

More and more Soviet commanders are
doing two things,

they are learning
and they are surviving.

On August 31st, following a
conference at Hitler's headquarters,

General Halder noted that...

The Fuhrer has ordered that upon
penetration into the city,

the entire male population
be eliminated,

since Stalingrad, with its one
million uniformly Communist
inhabitants, is extremely dangerous.

The women, Halder continued, "must
be shipped off."

He did not say to where.

But the Birkenau extension to
Auschwitz concentration camp

was operational by summer 1942.

When an article in the August issue
of the SS Magazine,
Das Schwarze Korps,

explained, "Our duty is to ensure
that only people of pure
German blood inhabit the East."

Through Hitler's propaganda,

he was actually able to construct
an image of "us".

Of us Germans, of us Aryans.

Rallies and the propaganda movies
with straight lines and everybody
in uniform

and this is WHO WE ARE.

It gave us meaning.

And this is very powerful.

In August, Heinrich Himmler, Head of
the SS,

strolled around the city of Zamosc,

at first to be re-named
Himmlerstadt.

But that was changed.

It would be called Pflugstadt -
Plough Town -

since it would be the centre of
Himmler's fantastical vision
of rustic renewal.

More than 110,000 Poles were
expelled from 300 villages

to make room for Wir Bauern - armed
farmers.

There's mass resettlement.

Like many people who lose their
homes

just because the Germans say,
"Well, get out of it. We have
German settlers. Let one move in."

The Nazis were anti-modernist

They wanted to kill 30 million
people in the Soviet Union

and turn it back into an
agricultural society.

Reverse 30 years of
industrialisation and urbanisation
there.

Himmler told the town's German
administrator to knock Zamosc down

and replace it with a German town.

Corn is today, settlement area
tomorrow,

German territory the day after
tomorrow.

Nazis, they wanted to left here
mostly people with Aryan
appearances,

so it was like the policy of ethnic
engineering maybe, if you want.

Fortunately for history,

Zamosc's shocked administrator
asked,

"But what does a German town look
like?"

Himmler's architects were still
working on the answer to that
question

when the German's pulled out in
July 1944.

Zamosc is now a UNESCO World
Heritage Site.

Field Marshall Gerd von Rundstedt
called it...

A dirty Jewish hole.

On September 1st, Chaim Rumkowski,

controversial Head of the Jewish
Council in the Lodz Ghetto,

a man who had his face printed on
the ghetto postage stamps,

was told that 25,000 ghetto
residents were to be deported.

And there was no doubting what that
meant.

The end goal must be to completely

cauterise out this pestilential
place.

We end in the whole of Eastern
Europe with more than 1,100 ghettos.

So they set up these ghettos to
control the Jews

and in General Government alone,
it's some 350.

On September 5th, Chaim Rumkowski
spoke from a platform in
Firefighters Square.

A grievous blow has befallen the
ghetto.

They are asking for the best that
it possesses -

the children and the old people.

In my old age I must stretch out my
hands and beg.

Brothers and sisters,

give them over to me.

Fathers and mothers,

give me your children.

It's clear that everybody had a
line in a different place.

We don't know where Rumkowski's was
really.

But he also, I believe, must've had
it somewhere.

On September 11th, Von Paulus,
commanding the 6th Army,

was at the Werwolf in Vinnytsia to
brief Hitler on his plan to take
Stalingrad.

He held an advantage of three to one
in man power,

six to one in armour,

and the Luftwaffe controlled the
skies over the city.

The attack went in at 06:30 on
September 14th.

By noon Axis troops had reached the
city centre.

On October 14, Von Paulus flung
three infantry divisions and 300
tanks

towards the factory district.

On October 21st, Field Marshall
Keitel said...

The Fuhrer is convinced the
Russians are collapsing.

On November 8th, commemorating his
failed Beer Hall coup,

and speaking of Stalingrad, Hitler
said...

That is what I wanted to capture
and, do you know, we got it!

There are only a few more tiny
pockets left.

On the 11th, the German offensive
reached the banks of the Volga

on a 500m front.

Ice was drifting in the river

and the Soviet Reserve,

of which the German's were unaware,

was over one million men,

with 979 tanks,

14,000 guns

and 1,350 aircraft.

On the morning of November 19th,

ever after known in Russia as
Artillery Day,

it is reported that the earth shook

almost 50km from the bombardment

as 13,541 Soviet guns

and Russian Marshall music played
by a 90-strong divisional band

opened Operation Uranus,

in thick fog and driving snow.

Within 24 hours, 65,000 of the
targeted Romanian troops were
prisoners.

Three days later,

Vatutin's South-West Army Group

and the left flank of Yeremenko's
Stalingrad army group

joined near Kalach.

The 6th Army, the largest
formation in the Wehrmacht,

was trapped in the Stalingrad
Kessel - 55km by 30.

Of Paulus's 275,000 men,

91,000 would survive into
captivity.

Less than 10,000 would return to
Germany after the war.

Van Paulus sought permission to
break out.

But Hitler, having returned to the
Wolfsschanze at Rastenburg, refused.

We must not give it up now under
any circumstances.

We won't win it back again.

Arthur Schmidt, Chief of Staff of
the 6th Army,

offered a feeble assurance to his
beleaguered troops...

Just hold out.

The Fuhrer will get us out.

On the 12th, Operation Winter Storm,

the German attempt to relieve the
6th

by breaking into the Kessel,

was launched at Kotelnikovo,

southwest of Stalingrad.

Meanwhile, northwest of the city,

the whole of the Italian 8th Army,

along with most of the Romanian 3rd,

had been wiped out.

Romanians were fighting for their
territories

but the Italians, they
were fighting for nothing.

They were brought here in order to
help Germans conquer this country.

From their paradise in Italy they
were brought to the snows of
Siberia.

It was a kind of tragedy for them.

We have to understand Soviet
success at Stalingrad in context.

Parallel to Operation Uranus you
have something called Operation
Mars.

So, this is Army Group Centre.

They are being attacked by a huge
Soviet force

directed by Zhukov.

And ultimately this fighting around
Rzhev,

between a 15-month battle that
begins in the winter of '41, '42,

that goes right through into 1943,

when ultimately the Germans
themselves choose to withdraw
from Rzhev,

but the total Soviet losses in the
fighting around Rzhev come to 1.3
million.

It costs more Soviet soldiers
at Rzhev

than the whole six month campaign
at Stalingrad.

In December,

the British Foreign Secretary,
Anthony Eden,

rose in the House of Commons,

and told of mass executions of Jews
by Nazis.

From all the occupied countries,

Jews are being transported in
conditions of appalling horror and
brutality to Eastern Europe.

None of those taken away

are ever heard of again.

The British Parliament observed a
moment's silence.

Joseph Goebbels thought their
action extraordinary.

"It was," he thought...

Astonishing how much the
English people,

above all, the upper classes,

have become Jewified.

At the end of the year,

Hitler received a report from
Himmler.

Between the 1st September and 1st
December,

387,370 gang members had been
killed in Ukraine.

A total that included
363,211 Jews.

Soviet prisoners of war were not
being killed.

They were simply being left to die.

Fenced into open fields

with no shelter,

no food, medicine or clothing,

they were allowed to starve.

Which, in their scores of
thousands, they did.

At the start of the new year, 1943,

the Germans were driven from Mozdok
in the Caucasus.

Melnik followed a day later

and what had been a rapid advance

was threatening to turn in to a
pell-mell retreat.

On January 8th, General
Rokossovsky, commanding the Don
Front,

sent Von Paulus, trapped in
Stalingrad, an ultimatum.

Ordered by Hitler to fight to the
last man and the last bullet,

Von Paulus rejected the ultimatum.

Request immediate permission to
surrender in order to save lives of
remaining troops.

It surprised Zhukov when Stalin
chose Rokossovsky rather than
Yeryomenko

to command the final assault -
Operation Ring.

And he frowned. Stalin asked him...

Why don't you say anything?

Yeryomenko would be very hurt.

It is no time for feeling hurt.
We're not schoolgirls, we're
Bolsheviks.

Rokkosovsky was intelligent
and well educated.

And I think his methods of
war...were more effective.

Rokkosovsky gave the order for the
assault.

And at dawn on 10th January 1943,

Operation Ring was launched

to overwhelm Stalingrad.

Beginning with a bombardment by
7,000 guns.

Then 280,000 troops and 250 tanks
made a final push.

Supplies all gone.

What orders should I give to troops
that have no more ammunition?

On January 30th, Goebbels, in a
broadcast, said...

A thousand years hence, every
German will speak with awe of
Stalingrad.

And remember that it was there that
Germany put the seal on her victory.

Lavrentiy Beria viewed the affair
less charitably.

A confrontation between two rams.

It was a vanity battle.

Stalingrad, while a great victory
for the Red Army,

still has the German armies deep
inside the Soviet Union.

And the idea that the Red Army is
one day going to push them all the
way back to Berlin

still seems like a long, distant
prospect.

Hitler promoted Von Paulus to Field
Marshall,

because no German field marshall
had ever surrendered his command.

The baton was dropped to him by air.

The next day the Field Marshall
surrendered his command.

Hitler called it...

An about face on the threshold of
immortality.

Von Paulus took a different view...

I have no intention of shooting
myself for this Bohemian corporal.

I think when Stalingrad becomes a
turning point is,

a lot of the things we know from
deconstructing German war economy,

the German army, how they
understand and how they operate.

To what extent did anyone know that
at the time?

I think there was a reason why
German general staff officers,

who were in command of a lot of
information, should have know that.

After Stalingrad, the Axis still
controlled more than 2,200,000
square kilometres of the USSR

and ruled over the 65 million
people who lived there.

It would take a further 18 months
before the invaders were expelled,

which not everyone hoped for.

After Stalingrad,

Archbishop Polikarp of the revived
Autocephalous Orthodox Church in
Ukraine,

urged Ukrainians to go and work in
Germany

and so help to defeat the Communist
Muscovite Jewish State.

Soviet figures show the effect on
partisan numbers of victory at
Stalingrad.

In Belarus in February in 1943,

there were 65,000 partisans.

By June - 100,000.

And by the end of the year -
360,000.

Similar increases were recorded in
the Baltic States and Ukraine.

Operation Winterzauber took
place in 1943 in February.

The pretext was to fight against
the bandits, as it was called in
German documents.

Against partisans.

The aim was to create a 30-40
kilometres of clear surface

without any trees, without anything
and without villages.

If you look at some of the German
maps,

they even have whole areas which
are shaded in as partisan.

There's no real German occupation
presence,

and they're fully aware that these
areas

are essentially enemy controlled.

Perhaps in the hope that sight-seers
would become soldier-farmers

the firm of Baedeker was asked to
produce a tourist guide to the
General Government.

The guide claimed anything positive
as German influenced.

Noting, for example, the...

..typically German square in
Zolkiew.

Construction of Zolkiew - today's
Zhovkva -

began in 1597.

The first Rabbi was appointed in
1626.

In 1635 the Jews received the right
to build a brick synagogue.

Its construction was completed in
1690.

There were still people, older
generation,

who resided in small towns in
shtetls.

They were more or less religious,

they spoke, at least in the family,
Yiddish.

And their culture was completely
exterminated.

There are still local cemeteries
but of course, they're in very poor
condition.

And some magnificent synagogues...

..magnificent, but partly destroyed.

Destroyed, but still standing.

A rebuke to those who would deny.

Crumbling architecture that asks,
"Where are the Jews?"

On January 12th 1943, the Red Army
launched Operation Iskra -

Spark - in the Leningrad sector.

With the combined efforts of the
Volkhov and Leningrad fronts

defeat the enemy in the area of
Lipka, Gaitolovo,

Dubrovka, Shlisselburg and thus
penetrate the Leningrad blockade.

It speaks to something of the
Soviet proficiency

now to muster all of this
remarkable industrial capacity,

into very large Soviet fronts.

But they now have the operational
ability

to attack defended positions with
major German resources,

and crush them.

On the 13th the Voronezh-Kharkov
offensive got under way.

And Hitler issued his Total War
decree.

Fuhrer decreed to bring another
500,000 men in to the German Armed
Forces

by replacing male factory workers
with women.

Accordingly, all women between 17
and 45 years old are required

to register for employment.

It was the month when Churchill and
Roosevelt met in Casablanca

and President Roosevelt,

quite possibly off the cuff,

announced that the war could be
ended only by "unconditional German
surrender."

On February 7th Hitler explained
Stalingrad to the Gauleiters.

What you are witnessing is a
catastrophe of unheard of magnitude.

The Russians broke through.

The Romanians gave up.

The Hungarians didn't even put up a
fight.

If the German people fails

then it does not deserve that we
fight for its future.

The next day the Germans were
driven from Kursk.

The war, which was wagered by the
Germans against the Czar was a war
of a completely new type.

It was a deadly war.

During this time, the Soviet people,
they understood what they were
facing.

And they understood what kind of
war they were waging.

On February 15th the Demyansk
Offensive launched.

Kharkov was recaptured.

Vlostov, which had twice changed
hands,

would not change hands again.

But Kharkov did, when von Manstein,

surprising the Soviet commanders,
counter-attacked,

pushing the Soviets back to the
line of the Donetsk.

Hitler was at von Manstein's
headquarters at Zaporozh'ye,

within sound of Soviet artillery.

He told his troops...

A thousand kilometres from the
Reich's frontiers

Germany's present and future is
in the balance.

It was the day that Joseph Goebbels,

having been driven to the Berlin
Sportpalast in his bulletproof
Mercedes,

a Christmas present from Hitler,

delivered his often quoted
Total War speech

to a hand-picked audience of
thousands.

Broadcast worldwide.

Goebbels was talking about much
more than material production,
than industry.

He was talking about the mindset of
the German people as a whole.

It was a relatively advanced stage
of the war, let's keep in mind.

He was talking about the ideal of
"We're all in this together."

"Our fates lie together. Whatever
happens now, we're in this together
and we have to see it through."

"Whatever that means."

"Whether it means defeat, or
victory, we have to see it through."

So it was the Russians fault for
keeping military secrets,

so typically Bolshevik.

But they were not the worst.

Jewry is a contagious infection.

Enemy nations may raise
hypocritical protests against our
measures against Jewry

and cry crocodile tears,

but that will not stop us from doing
that which is necessary.

And this idea of the
Volksgemeinschaft, the national
or ethnic community,

came in to play here.

I think that's what the
Volksgemeinschaft had become by
this point in the war.

A community of fate - that we're
all in this together,

we all have done things we
shouldn't have done.

If we don't win this war,

Lord help us.

Their only answer was to ratchet up
the violence.

To radicalise things.

"OK." They were convinced, "We're
not actually being radical enough."

"If we're now losing the war...the
only explanation for that is that
we're not being ruthless enough."

"That we're not being tough enough."

To keep Hitler's promise,

deportations from the Biaystok
Ghetto started.

And the last Jews in Berlin were
shipped out.

Greek Jews began arriving in
Auschwitz in March.

The ghetto in Krakow was liquidated

and Jews were transported from
Luxembourg,

from Vienna and from Prague.

When German police entered the
Warsaw ghetto

to begin its liquidation,

shots were fired and they withdrew.

At two in the morning of April 19th,

troops began to encircle the ghetto.

At six, 2,000 SS troops entered to
be met by meagrely armed groups

bent on resistance.

It's really an uprising of young
people and of single people.

And we often say that the uprising
could only happen

because those people were not
responsible for anyone anymore.

The bulk of the ghetto population
sheltered in the concealed world
they had created.

In cellars, sewers, ceilings,

and crawl spaces.

We want to live to see light
triumph over darkness.

But will we make it?

Is it not too late?

And they're fully aware of how hard
this is, but

this is really the last try.

The last effort to choose a way of
dying, as well.

Of what is considered to be a...

..a different type of death.

In no way better, and that's really
important,

because there is no
better death.

And they don't consider it like
that.

By five in the afternoon,

with 200 killed or wounded,

the Germans had withdrawn.

An ultimatum on the 20th was
greeted by further resistance.

And on the 21st, tanks and artillery
joined the assault.

Mordecai Anielewicz, leader of the
Jewish Fighting Organization,
wrote to a friend...

Perhaps we shall meet again.

The main thing is, the dream of my
life is come true.

I have lived to see a Jewish
defence in the ghetto,

in all its greatness and glory.

Days go by. It is now the tenth day
of the action.

The ghetto is burned down.

One way or another,

lies death.

The uprising was systematically
extinguished

by troops under a committed Nazi -
SS Gruppenfuhrer Jurgen Stroop -

who reported that...

By blowing up the Warsaw synagogue

the Warsaw Ghetto is no longer in
existence.

He was awarded the Iron Cross
1st Class.

From the ruins of the ghetto

the Germans recovered 30 million
bricks

and 6,000 tonnes of scrap metal.

They murdered by Nazis, but they
were also denounced by Poles.

They're trying to survive

and, um...the number of them, we
can't really say how many because
this is so unclear.

We can't even estimate closely to
how many people actually survive in
Poland.

What is very important to say is
that those who survive, survive with
the help of Poles.

They are denounced by the Poles, but
they're also helped by others.

When Jews hoisted both the Polish
and Zionist flags during the ghetto
uprising

they were mocked in the local press.

The newspaper, Young River,
editorialised...

Of course, we do not condone mass
murders.

But we consider the "chosen people"
have linked their sympathies with
the Red Flag

from the Volga, rather than with
the Polish white eagle.

We know about the uncountable losses

that the Polish nation has suffered
because of the Jews.

It is for this reason that their
fate,

terrible as it is,

from a purely humane point of view,

appears to be just.

In similar vein,

General Marjan Kukiel, Minister of
Security of the Polish Government
in Exile, asked...

Whether there is any truth in the
claim

that the opposition of the Jews was
led by Soviet officers

parachuted from the air,

and whether arms were supplied in
the same way.

The clearest answer is in
Gruppenfuhrer Stroop's report.

As for the spoils of the uprising,

these consisted of seven Polish
rifles,

one Russian rifle,

one German rifle,

59 revolvers of various calibres,

a few hundred hand grenades,

which included home-made grenades,

a few hundred Molotov cocktails

and a quantity of explosives.

In 1952 at Warsaw's Mokotow Prison,

Jurgen Stroop was hanged for war
crimes.

As the ghetto was being destroyed,

Joseph Goebbels was writing of his
most recent conversation with
Hitler.

Given the state of the war, what he
wrote seems remarkable.

The Fuhrer expresses his unshakable
conviction that the Reich will one
day rule all of Europe.

We will have to survive a great
many conflicts,

but they will doubtless lead to the
most glorious triumphs.

And, from then on, the road to
world domination

is practically spread out before us.

That was in May.

In July, Radio Orange - the Dutch
Resistance radio station

broadcasting out of London -

asked the question which has been
attached like a shadow to the
Holocaust ever since.

Just how does it help the German
war effort

to herd together thousands of
defenceless Jewish Poles

and do away with them in gas
chambers?

It was no coincidence that they
selected the Jews as their main foe.

As their main enemy

because who had benefited most
from modernity, from the
enlightenment,

from political development

and social development in the
mid-late 19th century,

and early 20th century?

The Jews.

In June, the ghetto in Lviv was
liquidated.

A camp orchestra had been
established

which the guards assembled for a
final concert -

shooting the musicians as they
played.

Also in June, Franz Burat, Regional
Commissioner in Brest, wrote...

The presence of the Gypsies sent to
me last year form Bialystok

has a devastating effect.

I consider it urgently necessary
that these idlers be treated as the
Jews are.

In the month that followed,

the ghettos in Minsk, Lida and
Vilna were destroyed.

Before the end of the year,

the ghetto in Riga had been
eliminated,

and Jews from Italy and southern
France

had reached the death camps,

though transport priorities were
creating difficulties.

Our master plan for Jewish
resettlement

is severely jeopardised.

In 1943 the fate of thousands of
Polish officers was revealed.

The mass grave at Katyn was found
in February.

But the conduct of the Nazi regime

made it easy for Stalin to deflect
the blame for Katyn.

And it was 1990 before Russia
admitted responsibility.

And 20 more years

before confirming that the murder
of more than 20,000 Polish officers

had been ordered by Josef Stalin.

When the Germans regained Kharkov

they had established an untidy
front line,

at the centre of which bulged
a salient,

250km north-south and 160 deep,

centred on the city of Kursk.

Hitler ordered it eliminated.

The code name for the action, to
pinch out the salient, was Citadel,

and the action at Kursk

would be by any measure

the greatest land battle ever
fought.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media