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02:59Rumors spread among the Soviet soldiers, rumors of a gargantuan explosion in Japan.
03:06The first bomb was dropped over Hiroshima on August 6th.
03:22The next city followed on August 9th.
03:27Hiroshima and Nagasaki were utterly destroyed.
03:38Faced with nuclear annihilation, Japan surrendered on September 2nd, 1945.
03:45It was already clear that this was a completely new kind of weapon, but we were not specially briefed
03:54about it.
03:55We were not told much, especially about the radiation.
03:59Before the atomic bomb, tanks had been the ultimate symbol of power.
04:08Now, Mahmoud Gareyev, his fellow Soviet tank crews and soldiers worldwide faced an uncertain future.
04:15What good were their tanks compared to nuclear weapons?
04:22After that nuclear attack, and in that early post-war world, there was a lot of soul-searching, certainly in the West, about whether we want to continue with the tank.
04:36Does it have a role and a function in future war?
04:43The US were the only country with nuclear weapons.
04:47Tank fleets like the Soviet Union had were seen as obsolete.
04:53The US stopped building tanks.
04:56Atomic bombs alone were to guarantee peace in their time.
05:02Well, it was clear that the atomic bomb would change the ways of war itself.
05:08Because of what this weapon could do, it was difficult to imagine how such a war would end.
05:16Soviet factories kept building ever more modern tanks.
05:21They were unfazed by the atomic bomb.
05:25And on August 28, 1949, the world found out why.
05:37Soviet scientists had built a bomb of their own.
05:42The Soviet Union became a nuclear superpower, on par with the United States, and with more and better tanks.
05:51I believe it was absolutely necessary and it paid off.
05:57If we had not had the kind of protection that nuclear weapons gave us, we would probably have a different world order now.
06:04And we would, let's say, have a different kind of dialogue with our potential friends.
06:10Korea, June 25th, 1950.
06:11Two hundred and twenty-five North Korean tanks poured across the border into the South.
06:24It took them only hours to overrun South Korea's defences.
06:29These were the same Soviet-built tanks that had been sent against Japan in 1945.
06:35After the end of World War II, the Soviet army had given them to their Chinese and North Korean allies.
06:43Well, we had brought everything that we had in terms of weapons.
06:50T-34 and KW tanks, 150mm and 203mm long-range guns and so on.
06:58We equipped everyone, including the Chinese People's Liberation Army, with our weapons.
07:04South Korea was allied with the United States.
07:09The US pondered using its nuclear weapons to defend it.
07:14But North Korea was allied with the Soviets, who had nuclear weapons as well.
07:20It's simply impossible to use this weapon.
07:25I think even die-hard warmongers would think long and hard before ever using this weapon.
07:37The United States decided against using nuclear weapons.
07:41Instead, they and their allies sent their armies to defend South Korea.
07:46But by now, what tanks the US still had was simply obsolete.
07:51The use of tanks in the Korean War makes Americans realise that there is still a need for tanks,
07:57as they could see, of the power of nuclear weapons.
08:00Actually, if you're going to have engagements like Korea,
08:03where it would be very unlikely you'd want to use a tactical or a larger nuclear weapon,
08:09therefore your conventional forces are still going to be very important to you.
08:16US engineers had to develop a new tank.
08:26They named it Patton, after the US's most famous tank general.
08:32The Patton had a 90mm gun that was superior to the T-34s.
08:37But many crews were uneasy whether the tank was ready for war.
08:41But once in Korea, the Patton proved a match for the Soviet tanks it faced.
08:47North Korea's invasion was defeated.
08:50And on July 27th 1953, North and South Korea finally agreed to an armistice.
08:56But the next potential battlefield was already looming.
09:06The US and the countries of Western Europe had formed a military alliance called NATO.
09:11All of NATO had access to US tanks and the protection of US nuclear weapons.
09:18The Soviet government felt threatened by NATO and forged its own alliance,
09:23the Warsaw Pact, on May 14th 1955.
09:27The Soviets, they're into this position of not only supplying their own army with vehicles,
09:36but pushing the idea of Soviet expansion into countries,
09:40some of which Soviet troops are already based in,
09:43some of which he now starts supplying.
09:45So the Soviet bloc becomes bigger.
09:47To sweeten Warsaw Pact membership,
09:51the Soviet Union equipped its allies with its most modern tank, the T-54.
10:01It had a 100mm cannon that was far more powerful than anything NATO had.
10:06Despite this large gun, the T-54 was small and difficult to hit.
10:12To be so small, the T-54's interior was cramped and its gun could only be raised by 9 degrees.
10:22And already, Soviet engineers were working on an update.
10:26The next model, the T-55, was to be protected against nuclear weapons.
10:31It could be sealed against radiation and fallout.
10:34Air for the crew ran through filters.
10:37The T-55 could fight in a nuclear war.
10:41I believe the T-55 was kind of like the Kalashnikov.
10:48It was a very reliable machine, very agile, with a high level of armoured protection.
10:56It was very well received by the troops and much loved by our tankers, the T-55.
11:04The T-54 and T-55 combined excellent protection with superior firepower.
11:10Within just a few years, tens of thousands were built.
11:20Soviet and Warsaw Pact armies together paraded them through Eastern Europe.
11:27Their leaders could not foresee the consequences of such rampant militarisation.
11:32Budapest, October 23rd, 1956.
11:41200,000 Hungarians took to the streets.
11:47They called for freedom, for a withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact and for all Soviet troops to leave Hungary.
11:54When the government did nothing, protesters took out their anger on Soviet symbols and statues.
12:04That convinced the Soviet army that something had to be done.
12:08The 1956 events in Hungary showed that the Americans tried various disruptive manoeuvres to alienate countries from Soviet support.
12:25Soviet leaders sent their tanks to end the protests.
12:28The Hungarian army was supposed to join them.
12:32But Hungary's tankers would not move against their own people.
12:36Instead, many joined the protesters.
12:39Suddenly, the Soviet army faced an insurrection armed with tanks.
12:45Soviet generals were nervous and withdrew their army on October 28th, 1956.
12:50And just like that, the people of Budapest were free.
12:55One of them was Istvan Elieva.
13:00We ran away from home.
13:02Three of us were going to defect to the West when it happened.
13:06It was a ridiculous thing.
13:09We were eight years old.
13:11What can you expect from an eight-year-old child?
13:15Istvan and his friends dreamed of a new life.
13:18They left their homes in Budapest and set out on their tricycles.
13:29We hid in a cornfield.
13:31We told ourselves that we would have to stay hidden when we got to the border,
13:34so the secret police didn't catch us.
13:38But in the middle of the night, they saw lights coming towards them.
13:42Lights from Soviet tanks.
13:44When Istvan Elieva and his friends emerged from the cornfield in the morning,
13:50they found themselves in a war zone.
13:53We saw a lot of dead people.
13:59We saw wrecked cars and burnt-out tanks, and we saw soldiers.
14:05Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev wanted to make an example of Hungary.
14:10He sent several thousand Soviet tanks into Budapest.
14:16It was the single largest tank operation in history.
14:20Khrushchev decides that this is a time we have to make a stand now with Hungary,
14:25hence the brutal force.
14:27If the Russians are going to do it, they're not going to do it in half measures.
14:29Many of Hungary's soldiers had sided with the protestors.
14:40Now they found themselves facing one of the largest tank armies ever assembled.
14:44If you send your troops into another country, you have to be decisive about it.
14:57To fool around with companies or battalions only serves to unleash war.
15:05Hungary's army disintegrated, and civilians took up the fight.
15:09They filled bottles with gasoline, with a rag for a wick.
15:17These Molotov cocktails could set a tank aflame, forcing the crew to flee.
15:24Still, it's a shocking experience to see burnt people.
15:29Many soldiers were burnt inside their tanks when they had gasoline bottles thrown against them.
15:36No, we weren't scared.
15:37We weren't scared.
15:38That's the interesting part, that we weren't scared.
15:41A lot of kids of my age did crazy things like throwing grenades.
15:48They weren't afraid, because they didn't understand what they were doing.
15:53Soviet tanks conquered Budapest in three days.
15:58When the smoke cleared, 3,000 Hungarian civilians and 700 Soviet soldiers lay dead in the streets.
16:08Istvan Elieva had experienced the terror of the tanks firsthand.
16:12But the effect was different than one might expect.
16:16Tanks began to fascinate him.
16:18I was aware that these were dangerous things.
16:22I'd seen what they were capable of.
16:26But I liked them.
16:27I knew that a tank could do really evil things, but I liked the way they were built.
16:34Istvan Elieva was fascinated by the powerful, robotic nature of the tanks.
16:40To his countrymen, they were symbols of oppression.
16:43After Budapest, none would dare question Soviet dominance and risk facing their tanks again.
16:51The Soviets are prepared to not care about world opinion at this time.
16:55So how they suppress people, it's not done with the media in mind whatsoever.
17:02It is a brutal suppression that goes on.
17:04In West Berlin, thousands protested the invasion of Hungary.
17:17They feared that they might be next.
17:20West Berlin was part of West Germany and NATO.
17:23But like an island, it was surrounded by East Germany, a Warsaw Pact member.
17:32The United States sent one of their best tank units to Berlin and named it the Berlin Brigade.
17:42It was armed with modernised patterns.
17:46Many soldiers were already the second or even third generation to come to Europe.
17:53The U.S. military academy at West Point in 1957.
17:59My father fought in World War I with the United States Navy.
18:03My cousin fought in World War II with the U.S. Army.
18:08Captured twice, escaped twice.
18:12George Jolwin was a standout high school football player.
18:16He turned down other prestigious colleges to join the U.S. military academy at West Point in 1957.
18:23George Jolwin had first seen tanks in World War II newsreels and been fascinated ever since.
18:30I went through what we would call our basic courses in the infantry and tanks were available then at Fort Benning.
18:40We did many exercises where we would cross-attach tanks with infantry and so I got to know tanks very well.
18:49George Jolwin graduated as second lieutenant in the U.S. Army in 1961.
18:54He was posted to West Germany and discovered West Berlin.
19:03I went there and had to take the train.
19:06You had a special train to take from Frankfurt.
19:08And I mean it was a wonderful place and very lively, free and open.
19:18George Jolwin.
19:23All that changed on August the 13th 1961.
19:27George Jolwin saw Soviet tanks cut off West Berlin.
19:34Following them were engineers with bricks and barbed wire.
19:37It was the beginning of the Berlin Wall.
19:42The Berlin Brigade's tanks went to the newly created border.
19:53But all they could do was watch the Iron Curtain become manifest.
19:58Europe would be split in two for the next 28 years.
20:06When I went there and the mower, the wall was being built, the tension and what you saw there by Checkpoint Charlie of people getting caught in the barbed wire coming through trying to escape from east to west.
20:23It reinforced in a way, I now know why we are here.
20:30George Jolwin felt part of the elite of the U.S. Army.
20:34But he knew that they alone could not stop a potential Soviet invasion.
20:41They needed the Bundeswehr.
20:43But rearming West Germany after World War II had been controversial.
20:48The Bundeswehr was given U.S. built tanks.
20:51Even so, Jolwin knew that NATO could not match the Warsaw Pact for sheer numbers.
20:58But his superiors reckon that they might not have to.
21:02To attack, the attacker needs to build, normally we say, a three to one advantage.
21:08If you're in a defensive position, you've got dug-in positions, you've got all the supporting fires, artillery, tanks, mines, etc.
21:19To penetrate that requires a larger force.
21:25West German generals were not happy with their patterns.
21:29They wanted a new tank and tasked the engineers who had built Hitler's panzers to build it.
21:36The most feared tank of World War II had been the Tiger.
21:45Its successor was named Leopard.
21:48It was conceived as a high-tech tank with night vision optics, advanced electronics, and an engine that could run on almost any kind of fuel.
22:01Germany's generals reckoned that the Leopard would give them the edge over any tank the Soviets might come up with.
22:15Warsaw Pact generals were concerned about NATO's high-tech tanks.
22:25To match them, they demanded more and better tanks based on the T-55.
22:32And to drive them, they needed ever more and better tank crews.
22:36In 1966, I joined the army.
22:42I went to Red Sag because the tank corps there had a tank driving school.
22:47I spent eight months there and then I was transferred to the 2nd Battalion.
22:53East Van Iliva had seen Soviet tanks crush his country's revolution in 1956.
23:07Tanks had fascinated him ever since.
23:11He first climbed into a T-55 in 1966 and soon found out that there was a lot to tank training he would never have expected.
23:23In order to be a tank driver, you had to pass an underwater aptitude test.
23:32To cross a river underwater in a tank, you had to train.
23:39A lot of people failed due to the underwater crossing.
23:43It was a special part of training, you see.
23:46In general, 30 out of a hundred failed.
23:53When driving underwater, there was no way to see the outside.
24:03It's easy to lose all sense of direction.
24:07This made crossing even small rivers very dangerous.
24:12But East Van Iliva passed the underwater test.
24:16Soon after, he learned just why his commanders emphasized underwater training.
24:21They realized that the western forces would blow up the bridges.
24:33So all the rivers running from the south to the north into the North Sea or the Channel,
24:38all those bridges would be blown.
24:40How are they going to carry on the advance?
24:42So they give the tank a snorkel so it can deep wade under certain types of rivers.
24:46Soviet engineers knew that not all T-55s were waterproof.
24:53And so the crews had to learn something else.
24:57How to escape from a sinking tank.
24:59From the beginning, East Van Iliva's training focused on more than just how to operate his tank.
25:17All of Hungary's tank crews were trained to fight a very specific enemy.
25:20NATO was our enemy.
25:27The German and the Italian armies, but also the Austrians.
25:33We had a briefing on the enemy armies.
25:36The Leopard 1s already existed.
25:41And we had their specifications too.
25:45And when we compared, we made quite a sour face.
25:50Because a lot of their machines were far better than what we had.
25:55East Van Iliva was in the middle of this tank arms race between NATO and Warsaw Pact.
26:00He was discontent because the Soviet army kept their newest tanks for themselves and only gave them older models.
26:09But should war come, they were expected to bear the brunt of the fighting.
26:16First and foremost, I was a Hungarian soldier.
26:20Primarily, I would have protected Hungary at any cost.
26:24But not the Warsaw Pact.
26:25On the evening of August the 1st, 1968, East Van Iliva and his fellow soldiers were ordered to get ready for combat.
26:46We didn't like it, and as privates, we didn't know what was going on.
26:50But neither did the officers or the junior officers.
26:52We didn't like it.
26:54East Van Iliva and his fellow tankers were nervous.
26:58Was this the war they had been trained for?
27:01On August the 20th, they were told to assemble for their mission briefing.
27:05They told us that in Slovakia, a counter-revolution had broken out.
27:15And according to the Warsaw Pact, we had to go in to help our Slovakian comrades.
27:23And in the spring of the year, Slovakia.
27:27Slovakia was part of Hungary's neighbour, Czechoslovakia.
27:32The countries were close and many Hungarians lived in Slovakia.
27:34In the spring of 1968, peaceful political protests and reforms had shaken Czechoslovakia.
27:41and reforms had shaken Czechoslovakia.
27:48Soviet leaders called these reforms a counter-revolution.
27:52They ordered their generals to plan an invasion.
27:58Mahmoud Gareyev was among them.
28:00And to ensure compliance, the Soviet leadership
28:03once again found an alternative culprit.
28:07In Czechoslovakia, things were more serious.
28:11This was about torpedoing the Warsaw Pact.
28:15We were told that NATO troops were massing
28:17at the Czechoslovakian border.
28:20The internal uprising had to be put down
28:23so that NATO troops could not enter the country.
28:29Mahmoud Gareyev knew that Czechoslovakia
28:32shared a border with West Germany, and thus NATO.
28:35What he didn't know was that there never were plans
28:40for a NATO intervention.
28:45How do you motivate troops?
28:47You motivate them by saying,
28:49they're going to attack us.
28:51They've got all this planning.
28:54We had plans to go and help open up Berlin if it became that.
29:00But attacking Russia,
29:03you know,
29:05Napoleon failed.
29:06Hitler failed.
29:08It was really trying to protect Western society as we knew it.
29:18Our leaders understood that.
29:20I think our troops understood it.
29:23On August 21st, 1968,
29:26Soviet, Hungarian, Polish, East German and Bulgarian tanks
29:31were ordered into Czechoslovakia.
29:33The East German army stopped at the border,
29:39since a German invasion so soon after World War II
29:42seemed too provocative.
29:47But Istvan Ileva and Hungary's tank troops
29:50headed straight across.
29:52They ordered us to go,
30:09gave us the target and everything.
30:11But the unfortunate Slovakian border guards didn't know a thing.
30:14They are probably still running.
30:16They got so scared.
30:18The Warsaw Pact generals had learned from Budapest.
30:26This time,
30:27they sent overwhelming numbers of tanks and troops from the beginning.
30:32Their mission would be to neutralize the Czechoslovak army
30:35before it could take sides.
30:38Ileva's regiment was sent to surround and disarm
30:41the Slovak tank forces in the city of Levice.
30:48In fact, if the regiment of Levice had attacked us,
30:54two-thirds of them were Hungarian soldiers sitting in their tanks.
30:58And we were Hungarians as well.
31:01But back then, that was the point.
31:04This was the reason why the Russians sent us.
31:09Soviet leaders hoped that the forces in Levice
31:11would not fight their fellow Hungarians.
31:14East van Ileva had been told that he would defend Hungary.
31:21Now he and his fellow tankers
31:23had become an occupying force in a foreign country.
31:28I was sitting on top of the tank.
31:30I was eating.
31:31There was a big shutter on the window of the house.
31:35A young lady opened it,
31:38looked out of the window and asked me,
31:42what are you doing here?
31:44I just told her,
31:46I don't know.
31:48I don't know.
31:52The plan of the Warsaw Pact generals
31:54seemed to have worked.
31:56So overwhelming were their numbers
31:58that the Czechoslovak army did not dare oppose them.
32:01Soviet tanks headed straight for Prague.
32:06They would face an angry population,
32:09but this time, one not supported by tanks.
32:13Tanks are driven into the city centres.
32:15And again, we're back to this image of the tank
32:18as being, for the protesters, a symbol of oppression.
32:21But from the Soviet viewpoint of looking at using that tank,
32:26very few times is a civil population
32:30going to have something effective to use against it.
32:38Where armed resistance proved futile,
32:41the people of Prague found other ways to resist.
32:46They tore down street signs
32:48and gave Soviet soldiers wrong directions.
32:51The women of Prague took to taunting the occupying soldiers,
32:59often in scanty clothes.
33:05Other people went further and put themselves in the path of tanks.
33:18What made the papers all over the world
33:20with this unarmed guy standing right in front of the tank?
33:24And that became a symbol, too, of how do you stand up to aggression?
33:32Soviet tanks put an end to the Prague Spring.
33:39What few people realised was that the people of Prague
33:42had put a chink in the tank's mighty armour.
33:44Soviet generals, meanwhile, decided that they needed
33:49a real-world test of their tanks against NATO's.
33:57In 1968, we went to Czechoslovakia.
34:00When we returned, we were sent on because war was breaking out in the Middle East.
34:04We went to Egypt for two years. We were there in 1970 and 71.
34:13Mahmud Gureyev was part of a Soviet military mission.
34:16They delivered Soviet tanks to Egypt and Syria.
34:28Soviet army generals knew that these tanks would fight Israel.
34:32Israel had NATO tanks and was known for its highly trained tank crews.
34:37Soviet army soldiers had to fight Israel.
34:39Any war would be a battle for survival for their country.
34:43And many soldiers had another, even deeper motivation.
34:48I was born in the Kibbutz Lokamai Hagetat.
34:52The Kibbutz was founded by refugees who came from Europe after the Holocaust.
34:56Zavika Greengold was called up for military duty in 1970.
35:09Like all recruits, he was given a choice of what to do in the army.
35:16I was given three options to serve.
35:19The tanks, the tanks, or the tanks.
35:26These were centurions.
35:30And there I fell in love with the tanks.
35:35I saw what the turret looks like, the cannons mounting.
35:40I didn't know what it was.
35:42I didn't understand what I was seeing.
35:43But in my eyes, I saw it as a thing almost as beautiful as the curves of a woman.
35:50I fell in love with this thing called tank.
35:56It was designed in World War II and considered obsolete by the 1960s.
36:11Israeli engineers upgraded it with a better cannon, new armor,
36:16and a reliable diesel engine for the harsh climate.
36:19I saw it as a result.
36:21In 1973, Zavika Greengold was put in charge of a platoon, a group of four tanks.
36:29On October the 5th, 1973, he went home to celebrate the Jewish New Year, Yom Kippur.
36:37Around noon, we heard airplanes in the sky.
36:39That was highly unusual for Yom Kippur.
36:49Then we heard sirens, which seemed to come from Akko and Nahariyah.
36:58We didn't understand what was happening.
37:00Someone switched on the radio.
37:02We listened to the BBC because there are no Israeli radio broadcasts on Yom Kippur.
37:06Yom Kippur is the most important Jewish holiday.
37:14So almost all of Israel was off work, including most of the army.
37:22Syria and Egypt chose this day to send in their tank armies.
37:28Syria would attack from the north through the Golan Heights.
37:31The Egyptians would cross the Suez Canal, then the Sinai Peninsula.
37:42To defeat Israel's tanks, they had the newest Soviet technology.
37:50The Arab countries, when they go to attack Israel,
37:54were going to have to have anti-tank defenses.
37:57And a new generation of anti-tank weapons are coming into play.
38:02Already they've got RPG-7s, the famous rocket-launched anti-tank missiles,
38:07but they've now got, supplied from the Soviet Union, Saga.
38:13The Saga is an anti-tank missile in a suitcase.
38:18It is remote-controlled with a joystick.
38:20Syrian and Egyptian soldiers had spent months training with the Saga.
38:32The secret of its warhead is it's mostly hollow.
38:36Its explosives are packed around a lining made of copper.
38:40On impact, the explosion liquefies the copper,
38:44which burns into the tank and sets it on fire.
38:51The thing is, it's always a battle between armor and weapon.
38:56And the weapon, unfortunately, always wins.
39:02You can build a new kind of reactive armor or nuclear protection against rocket launchers,
39:06but not long after there will be a new weapon to counter it.
39:17When the attack came, it took Israel's army by surprise.
39:23They frantically recalled their soldiers from holiday leave.
39:26The main threat to Israel were the Syrian tanks coming through the Golan Heights.
39:39I will say it another way. We fought with our backs to Auschwitz.
39:46Zvika Gringold reported for duty in the Golan.
39:51He had to get his four tanks ready, but only two of his crews had made it there.
39:56No.
40:03Around 9pm, our brigade executive officer, David Israeli, came out to us and asked,
40:09Zvika, are you ready? I told him, two tanks are ready.
40:14And he said, you have to head out.
40:20With only two tanks ready, Zvika Gringold gave the order to move out.
40:24He knew that his centurions were severely outnumbered and facing more modern tanks.
40:31All they had was their training.
40:34The Israeli defense forces, quite simply, is fighting for its life and its country
40:39with some very skilled tank crewmen and some very experienced soldiers as well,
40:43which is another one of those elements that always has to be brought into play.
40:47Not just about the equipment, it's about the people involved.
40:53Zvika Gringold's tanks drove higher into the mountains.
40:58Suddenly, one tank broke down.
41:00Zvika's tank had to continue all alone.
41:16And suddenly, the incline ended and we were on the peak of some hill.
41:20The Shushnia Valley opened beneath us and within was a large mass of Syrian armored fighting vehicles.
41:30And suddenly, I was facing a Syrian tank.
41:33My whole crew saw it. It was so close.
41:39Eshko screamed and I called fire.
41:46Zvika aimed at the next one and fired again.
41:50And again.
41:52Then he called his commanding general and told him about what he was facing.
41:56But he didn't believe me. He began asking me, how many are there? How many tanks do you have?
42:06I knew that the Syrians were intercepting our communications.
42:09Should I tell them that I am one single tank?
42:13The general sent nine tanks to shore up Zvika's position.
42:17The newly formed unit was dubbed Zvika Force.
42:21They were facing over a hundred Syrian tanks.
42:24Zvika Force fired as fast as they could.
42:28Until they ran low on ammunition.
42:35Behind us, trucks arrived with fuel and ammunition.
42:41So we went back there, one after the other, to refuel and get more ammo.
42:47To boresight the cannons and do other things they hadn't had time for.
42:54The Syrians were surprised by such stiff resistance.
42:57Their modern Soviet tanks should have been able to destroy anything Israel had.
43:02But their tanks were made for battles in the plains of central Europe, not in Mediterranean mountains.
43:08The Syrian tanks were Russian.
43:12They were much lower and could only raise their gun by nine degrees.
43:15There are technical reasons for this.
43:20We fought with centurions. The downward angle of the centurion's gun is 17 degrees.
43:24The Israeli centurions were at the top of the Golan Heights.
43:30They were able to lower their guns enough to fire at the Syrian tanks in the valley.
43:35But those could not raise their cannons high enough to fire back.
43:38The Syrians were fought to a standstill. But they still had their SAGA missiles.
43:46Soldiers with SAGAs moved to destroy Zavika force.
43:50Suddenly, Zavika felt an impact.
43:52I looked down into the turret and saw nothing but fire.
43:59Then, I fell straight into the flames.
44:03Somehow, I managed to turn.
44:07The turret was full of shell casings, ammunition boxes, dust and dirt.
44:12But somehow, I managed to turn.
44:13I fell face first. I managed to turn around and get out.
44:21But I had shrapnel in my face and in my hands.
44:30Just as Zavika Greengold and his gunner abandoned their tank, it exploded.
44:38They were thrown clear and knocked unconscious.
44:41I woke up completely confused.
44:45My comrade asked, are you alive?
44:49Yes, let's run for it.
44:51We ran back, towards where the other tanks lay in position.
44:57We got there running, calling to them in Hebrew.
44:59We were lucky. It was utter chaos.
45:03The soldiers were running around.
45:05And in addition to ours, there were seven or eight other tanks that had also been hit.
45:12Zavika Greengold boarded another tank and fought on.
45:16But the strain of battle was becoming too much.
45:19After over 48 hours of fighting, he collapsed and was evacuated from the battlefield.
45:25On the road, I saw the terrible face of retreat.
45:31Civilians and soldiers, tanks and all kinds of things were heading for the river Jordan.
45:38I screamed and cried.
45:40It's all over. The Golan Heights have fallen.
45:43Flee everybody. Run away.
45:46But then fresh reinforcements arrived in the Golan.
45:50They heard that Zavika force had destroyed over 60 enemy tanks.
45:55This boosted their morale, allowing them to defeat the next Syrian attack.
46:07After two weeks of war, Egypt and Syria sued for peace on October 25, 1973.
46:14Soviet tank engineers analyzed the Yom Kippur War.
46:23They integrated lessons learned into a new tank, the T-72.
46:28Its cannon could fire the same kind of guided missiles that had proven so successful.
46:34It also had an automatic loader, meaning that it needed one less crew member,
46:39and could be built even lower than the T-55.
46:43The T-72 repeated the success of the T-55.
46:48It too is a mass-produced machine with a very favorable combination of the battle triad.
46:54Firepower, mobility and armor.
47:00And thus, tank designers on both sides of the Iron Curtain raced to outbuild each other.
47:06German engineers developed the Leopard 2.
47:11Its main feature was a sophisticated, stabilized gun.
47:17It could automatically track a target, even while driving at high speed.
47:26To show off just how well the cannon worked,
47:28the German army produced a tank commercial featuring a mug of beer.
47:33It was perhaps the ultimate trivialization of the ultimate war machine.
47:48We have a terrible tendency of just looking at the tanks as a top trumps phenomena.
47:54You know, the T-54, maybe the Centurion and certainly the M-60 were going to be better.
48:00But that's not how those tanks were going to fight.
48:03The commanders of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact spent billions on their tank fleets.
48:12The goal was to project enough strength that the other side would not dare attack.
48:17Both sides held maneuvers to showcase their prowess.
48:33These maneuvers took place in divided Germany.
48:37For if war came, they knew it would be fought here.
48:40And the key would be an area known as the Fulda Gap.
48:45Among the forces stationed here was the US's elite 7th Army.
48:51In 1985, George Jarwin became deputy chief of staff of this army.
48:57And responsible for war games involving the Fulda Gap.
49:01That's where the Turinger Mountains, it opens up and becomes rolling tank country,
49:07from there down to the Rhine River.
49:10At least that's what many of us thought.
49:13And that's where we had a lot of war games.
49:17That's where we anticipated.
49:20Guarding the Fulda Gap became the focus of US tanks in Europe.
49:24But stationing entire armies here put a strain on the US economy.
49:33George Jarwin was put in charge of reducing the numbers needed to protect the Gap.
49:47They then get to the point where they're thinking, let's pre-position equipment.
49:51And certainly the US Army has large stocks of tanks and other equipment already there in Europe.
49:58This pre-positioned equipment was the key to a strategy called Reforger.
50:04Return of forces to Germany.
50:07Thousands of US tanks were pre-positioned in storage sites across West Germany.
50:14Their crews lived in the US, but could be flown in within 72 hours.
50:18And then the tanks had to be kept in perfect condition.
50:27Troops would say, why do you have inspections in the motor pool?
50:31Because, for want of a wrench, you couldn't put a track back on.
50:36And you're sitting there, and you're a target, and you have higher probability of being killed.
50:42So you have to have all your tools.
50:44Now, tankers, you don't want to talk about because it's not as sensational.
50:48But I want to talk about that because that's what the difference between good units and great units.
50:54Reforger was practiced every year.
50:57One of the units would be called up with no warning, board their planes, and fly to Germany.
51:03Here, they were rushed to their tanks and headed out into maneuvers.
51:08It was another show of force and hopefully deterrence.
51:12George Jarwin and NATO's other planners kept Reforger on a hair trigger.
51:18If war seemed likely, they would have only a few days.
51:21Don't wait for the first shot to be fired. Start this process. And that's a deterrent factor.
51:28If you start that process, you start building it up before war starts. It's a deterrent factor.
51:35On the other side of the Iron Curtain, readiness for war was just as high.
51:43The Soviet and East German armies had their best units on the eastern side of the Fuldergap.
51:48The service with the Soviet forces in Germany is well remembered by everyone.
51:56Everyone lived the war, do you understand? Everyone lived with the possibility.
52:01And we knew that the order could come at any time to fulfill our mission objectives.
52:07By the late 1980s, tensions in both Germanies ran high.
52:13It seemed like the war that nobody wanted could happen at any moment.
52:18But then an event halfway across the world changed the age of tanks in a way that nobody could have foreseen.
52:31In April of 1989, the students of Beijing took to the streets.
52:36As before in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and other places, they demanded more freedom.
52:42And as had happened before, the Chinese government sent tanks to crush the uprising.
52:50But they were stopped by a single man.
52:53The fact that the person was brave enough to stand there, straight away, you could see he's established a relationship.
53:04He's not going to be, as brutally happened elsewhere in Chaliman Square.
53:08Vehicles crushed people who were rebelling against that government at the time.
53:13The images of a single man holding up a column of tanks sent shockwaves around the world.
53:26Ultimately, he was whisked away and the uprising was crushed by the Chinese army.
53:32The tank man's identity has never been revealed.
53:39But like the Hungarian and Czech protesters who came before him,
53:44he showed the world the limits of the power of the tank.
53:47As soon as people realise that there's people inside the vehicle and you can establish a relationship
53:55with those people, the robotic nature, that omnipotent nature of a tank is broken.
54:04During the summer of 1989, a wave of protests swept through the countries of the Warsaw Pact.
54:13And their governments came to realise a harsh truth.
54:16After Beijing, after the tank man, they had lost the certainty that their tank crews would obey
54:25if told to move against their own people.
54:46They wanted to prepare for the best of the tank at the time.
54:47Can't forget that they could be the first from the top of the tank.
54:50The tank should be the first from the live tank.
54:53They would have lost their own ship to the last half years.
54:55They could also go on to the water and a palace in the new ship.
54:56They could also have lost their own ship, but themachen would have lost their own ship.
54:57To be the last one in the Aurum Eve, they could also have lost their iguancy,
54:59and that they would have lost their primo of the ship.
55:01The situation like the river was the key to having to go on.
55:04The ship was still right for them.
55:06The ship was excess from a ship by thestopper from the ship.
55:08The ship was still out there, and the ship was still getting lost in the ship.
55:11A ship was about to think and the ship that was the день.