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00:00Previously on the last days of World War II, the Allied invasion of Okinawa began, the
00:05last stepping stone en route to mainland Japan. After a massive sea and air bombardment,
00:11thousands of American troops stormed the beaches and made their way inland. In Germany, Allied
00:18troops continued their push into the country's heartland. Hitler's henchman Martin Bormann
00:23called upon the people to resist to the last man, but his request falls on deaf ears.
00:32This week, Japanese resistance on Okinawa stiffens as American troops dig in for a long campaign.
00:39In Germany, American generals visit liberated concentration camps and see the horrors of
00:44Nazi brutality for the first time. And President Roosevelt's sudden death stuns the world, leaving
00:52Nazis elated and Allied relations strained, as the gulf of distrust between Stalin and
00:58Churchill widens.
01:22The 8th of April, Germany. The Western Allies surge into the German heartland from the
01:28west, while the Soviets are focused on taking the German capital from the east. In Berlin,
01:38Hitler spends most of his time holed up in his bunker. Eva Braun is with him, promising to
01:43remain at his side.
01:45Eva Braun was Hitler's mistress, kept a secret from the German public throughout the Third
01:52Reich. How is difficult to explain, because she was at Hitler's side quite frequently,
01:58but there was every effort made to keep her a secret. Hitler feared that his popularity
02:04among particularly female Germans would wane if it was clear that he was romantically involved.
02:09He also felt, in some senses, married to Germany, that his duties, his responsibilities were to
02:16take care of Germany, and therefore a wife, would be sort of out of the question.
02:21Hitler has little time to devote to affairs of the heart. He remains convinced that his
02:26battered German army can prevail, and that he will emerge from the Führerbunker victorious.
02:31The Wehrmacht have been frantically preparing three massive defensive barriers to the east of Berlin
02:43since early February. The forward line is dominated by the Silo Heights, a steep and rugged ridge
02:49five miles long. It stands between the Red Army and Berlin. Berlin is guarded by the remnants of the
02:57Wehrmacht and Waffen SS, as well as the Volkssturm, a home guard made up of elderly men and boys.
03:04Some of the city's defenders are barely in their teens.
03:10Berlin, for which they are preparing to fight and die, is a shadow of its former self.
03:16The city of Berlin is an enormous place, a huge, huge geographic area. The center of the city had been
03:22virtually completely destroyed by Allied bombing by 1945. Air raids have killed about 50,000 Berliners.
03:31Over 100,000 are now homeless. Food and clean water is scarce.
03:44Everyone in the city lives in fear of the approaching Red Army.
03:48Terrifying tales of their atrocities in other parts of the country are spread.
03:53There are rumors of rapes and massacres.
03:58The Red Army, as it entered Germany, was
04:02inclined and in some places actually given orders to wreak vengeance on the German people for what the
04:09German army and the German occupying forces had done in the Soviet Union.
04:13The 12th of April. Despite the chaos that has overcome their city, desperate Berliners try to
04:21maintain some sense of normality. In the evening, they attend a concert given by the city's philharmonic
04:28orchestra. The finale is Wagner's Goethe Dammerung, the twilight of the gods. It is the orchestra's last
04:35concert of the war. As the music wafts like smoke from the ruins of Berlin, only 75 miles lie between
04:45the German capital and the advancing Western Allies. German resistance in the Ruhr industrial valley
04:51has been virtually annihilated and the region is almost entirely under Allied control.
05:03As General Patton's Third Army drives towards Dresden and Leipzig, the gap between Allied
05:08forces in the west and the Red Army in the east is closing. Germany is being cut in two.
05:14The 8th of April. Patton's Third Army acts on reports that the Nazis have moved their gold treasury
05:21from Berlin to a potassium mine near the German village of Merkers.
05:26When Patton's Third Army was heading for Prague and they went through this part of central Germany
05:32and they occupied Turingia, some local people told some American soldiers,
05:37you should go to Merkers mine, you should see what's in there. Army engineers enter the mine
05:42and descend 250 feet below ground. A brick wall and steel safe door guard the entrance to room number
05:49eight. Using dynamite, they blast an entrance through the wall.
05:57And these guys, what if they couldn't believe it? It was a treasure house, like a cave of Aladdin.
06:02More than 7,000 bags of plundered Nazi loot, including nearly the entire gold reserves of the Reichsbank,
06:10fill the room. There are 55 boxes of crated gold bullion. Nearly 8,200 bars of gold. Over 1,300 bags of gold
06:22reichsmarks, British gold pounds and French gold francs. Suitcases and trunks are crammed with silver and gold
06:29ornaments, cigarette cases, tableware, vases, even gold fillings. Much of this had been taken from
06:36murdered or exiled Jews. The gold, silver and currency is estimated to be worth about 520 million US
06:43dollars, nearly 3 billion pounds today. And then the soldiers find something else, an incredible
06:50collection of art brought here for safekeeping that includes Manet's Winter Garden.
06:54The next week, Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton and Eddie would inspect the captured gold in awe.
07:01The discovery of the hidden cash is an important victory for the Allies, denying the Nazis use of
07:06this immense gold reserve.
07:08But no amount of money can improve the deteriorating relations between the Allied leaders.
07:18The ailing Franklin Roosevelt is less firm with Stalin, and less able to mediate in the growing rift between
07:24Stalin and Churchill. Since the liberation of Poland, Churchill has sought to get Western observers into the
07:31country. But Stalin has turned down all requests. Churchill tells the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden,
07:40I think the time has come for a showdown on these points.
07:47Unlike Churchill, Stalin has little interest in restoring pre-war governments to Eastern Europe.
07:53the seeds of the Cold War are being sown. Meanwhile, the Italian campaign, largely stagnant since the
08:02previous September, is about to burst to life. The 8th of April, Allied forces are preparing to attack
08:12across the Apennine mountains of northern Italy. It's expected that this offensive will bring a triumphant
08:17conclusion to the Italian campaign. Hiding out, behind the lines, is the deposed Italian leader, Benito Mussolini.
08:29Mussolini was born in 1883, the son of a blacksmith. A journalist by trade, Mussolini founded Italy's
08:37fascist party in the spring of 1919. Three years later, when asked by King Victor Emmanuel to form a government,
08:46Mussolini set about restoring Italy's faded glory. Through a mixture of bravado, finely honed political
08:52skills, and a modicum of charm and acting ability, most Italians quickly regarded him as a great man.
08:59They called him Il Duce, the leader. Mussolini, however, would soon establish himself as a dictator,
09:06suppressing all political opposition.
09:08In the 1930s, even Mussolini was impressed by Hitler's rise to power, a success that owed much to the
09:20example of Italian fascists. Hitler observed Mussolini from the beginning. It was on
09:26Mussolini's inspiration that Hitler formed the Nazi party. Mussolini came to recognize Hitler's
09:32Germany as a new dynamic force within Europe and joined forces with Germany in 1939.
09:41The alliance between the two leaders, however, was complex and ill-fated.
09:47Mussolini was the closest thing that Hitler ever had to a friend.
09:52The interpreter who was there often when Mussolini and Hitler met, he said that Mussolini was the one
09:59real love affair of Hitler's life. Mussolini, I think, had a much more ambivalent relationship
10:05to Hitler. I think he found Hitler genuinely terrifying.
10:11When the Allies invaded Italy in autumn of 1943, Mussolini could do little to stop them.
10:18The Allies had hoped their invasion could knock Italy out of the war and force German troops to
10:23be diverted to defend the peninsula. This is just what happened.
10:27Hitler would eventually have to commit nearly half a million men to hold the Italian front.
10:36Mussolini was imprisoned by the Italians, but Hitler orchestrated his escape.
10:41Hitler sent a special team of commandos under General Sicorny to get him out. And they picked him out
10:50from his prison, a very daring glider raid, got him off, took him back to Germany,
10:56and then set him up in northern Italy as a dictator of a puppet state which the Nazis allowed him to run.
11:04By now, Mussolini is a shadow of his former self and meekly accepts his new reduced status.
11:10He knows that if the Italian partisans get hold of him, he can expect no mercy. He now relies on the
11:17Germans for protection.
11:25The 9th of April.
11:28Allied forces begin their last offensive in Italy.
11:31The British 8th Army, commanded by General Sir Richard McCreary, leads the way.
11:40An amphibious assault across Lake Camachio outflanks the Germans.
11:44Simultaneously, British troops launch an assault from the southeast towards Argenta.
12:00The US 5th Army, led by Lieutenant General Lucian Truscott, will attack five days later through the
12:05mountains south of Bologna. McCreary and Truscott aim to trap and destroy all German formations left in Italy.
12:14Thousands of Allied aircraft pound German positions. Amongst them, the P-47 Thunderbolt.
12:23The P-47 Thunderbolt was a powerful and versatile fighter bomber. A bulky plane that weighed more
12:29than twice as much as a Spitfire, it was nicknamed the Jug because of its size and shape.
12:35Despite appearances, it was extremely fast and agile.
12:38It was a huge airplane. It had a 2,000 horsepower engine. It was the first fighter that had a four-bladed propeller.
12:51The P-47 was a single-seat, single-engine fighter. It was armed with eight half-inch machine guns,
12:57and up to 2,500 pounds of rockets or bombs. The P-47 had an exceptionally high rate of climb,
13:05a top speed of 430 miles per hour and a range of more than 1,000 miles.
13:09Used as ground support and bomber escort, the Thunderbolt saw action in both Europe and the Pacific.
13:21The German infantry lived in fear of this thing because they never knew when it was going to show up.
13:27The Jug is going to make life absolutely miserable for the Germans. They're going to lose truck after truck after truck.
13:41If it moved during the daylight hours, it got shot up by a P-47.
13:49By the end of the war, over 16,000 Thunderbolts had been produced.
13:57The aerial attack on German forces in northern Italy is immediately followed by a massive artillery barrage.
14:06It lasts 42 devastating minutes.
14:11Alarmed by amphibious landings on its flank and dazed by the scale of the Allied bombardment,
14:16the German 10th Army is soon in retreat.
14:19The 10th of April. The offensive continues.
14:30Flamethrower tanks are used to clear German strongpoints.
14:40The US 5th Army waits in the Apennines, poised to strike at Bologna,
14:45as the British attack is given all available air support.
14:50The 8th Army takes Argenta in three days and pushes on towards Ferrara.
14:55General von Vietinghoff, commanding German Army Group C,
14:58sees that the only way to salvage the situation is to order a full-scale retreat.
15:04He requests permission from Berlin to give the order.
15:07But Hitler refuses to listen. He expects his forces to fight to the last man.
15:12Vietinghoff later recalls,
15:16When I last saw him, I realised how mad he had become.
15:20His statements to me were all lies and made no sense.
15:25In his bunker, Hitler issues orders to formations that have ceased to exist.
15:29He has lost all grasp of the situation.
15:32And in his fury, he rages at his staff officers and berates the cowardice of his troops.
15:42Hitler also rages against the traitors in their midst.
15:45Nazi courts enforce Hitler's will.
15:51But sometimes even they are bypassed, as in the case of Admiral Canaris,
15:55the former head of APWA, German military intelligence.
15:59Very few knew Wilhelm Canaris was actually an enemy of the Third Reich.
16:05In 1939, he had witnessed Nazi atrocities in Poland,
16:09including the murder of civilians,
16:11which had revolted him and turned him against Hitler.
16:17With his deputy, General Hans Oster,
16:20he began to build an anti-Nazi hierarchy within APWA.
16:24Canaris and other conspirators regularly fed information about German strategies
16:28to the Allies.
16:30He also worked to save Jews from extermination,
16:33in one case rescuing seven men from a concentration camp
16:36by telling Himmler that the Gestapo had mistakenly arrested his agents.
16:42The men were handed over to the APWA and smuggled out of the country.
16:48In March 1943, Canaris flew to Smolensk to plan Hitler's assassination.
16:54But it was a doomed enterprise.
16:56In the wake of the July bomb plot,
16:59Gestapo investigations uncovered Canaris' double life.
17:03He and several co-conspirators were arrested.
17:12On the 9th of April, Canaris, his deputy general Oster,
17:16and a pastor by the name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer are executed.
17:20All are hanged in the courtyard of the Flossenberg concentration camp.
17:25Their naked bodies left to rot.
17:31That same day, German forces in Königsberg, the capital of East Prussia,
17:35surrender to the Soviets.
17:37The siege has lasted 59 days.
17:42During that time, the Germans suffered horrendous casualties.
17:45Hitler had refused to allow a surrender or evacuation.
17:49His decision cost the lives of thousands of German soldiers and civilians.
17:56The Russians take 27,000 German troops prisoner,
18:00including the German commanding officer, General Otto Lash.
18:04Hitler wants him shot for surrendering.
18:06But it's too late.
18:11The 11th of April.
18:15General Patton's 4th Armored Division reaches Buchenwald,
18:18a concentration camp near the town of Weimar.
18:21They can scarcely believe the horror that confronts them.
18:28All of a sudden, people came out from behind the buildings,
18:31and they were wearing these funny uniforms,
18:34and one of the voices in that crowd of people said,
18:37are you American?
18:38And we said yes, and they all cheered.
18:40And immediately, our weapons were straight to the ground.
18:43Our platoon leader had been called up to go with the company commander,
18:46and they turned off the furnace.
18:50The furnace was still going, and a black smoke was coming out,
18:52and had a terrible odor.
18:54And at about this time, we were joined by inmates.
19:01And the descriptions, you have heard of them, pictures you've seen of them,
19:10isn't enough.
19:12They were skeletons covered with parchment.
19:16They were thin, striped pajamas that couldn't hold out a two-knot gale.
19:24The troops are confronted by thousands of emaciated, skeletal victims of the Third Reich.
19:30Some too weak to do any more than blink their eyes.
19:34Bodies litter the ground.
19:37Some lie in heaps. Others are stacked neatly in tall piles.
19:42Buchenwald was a slave labor camp that supplied prisoners
19:45to local armaments factories.
19:47In the last few months of the war, exhaustion, starvation, disease and executions
19:53have been killing inmates at the rate of 150 per day.
19:56In a few days, the British army will liberate its first concentration camp.
20:07Captain Bob Daniel will be one of the first British soldiers
20:11to see the horrific conditions inside the camp at Bergen-Belsen.
20:1530,000 people had died there in just the past few months.
20:19Amongst them was Anne Frank.
20:24Daniel finds its commandant destroying incriminating evidence.
20:27What he witnesses at Bergen-Belsen provokes a strong reaction.
20:35I found the trench with 3,000 dead in it.
20:39The sight of these bodies in this trench
20:41was probably one of the most horrifying experiences you can think of.
20:47The 12th of April. Generals Eisenhower, Patton and Bradley arrive at a concentration camp
20:58liberated the previous week by American forces, just outside the town of Ordroof.
21:03For the first time, America's top generals see the horrors of a concentration camp with their own eyes.
21:10Patton drove in in his Jeep, and they stopped, and somebody took him over to the crematorium.
21:17And Patton came out of that. My God, he was livid.
21:20I have never seen a madder, angrier man in my life.
21:25As the Allies tour the camps, many believe the war has been given new meaning.
21:29There's always been a tendency to say,
21:34oh, well, German soldiers look pretty much like our soldiers.
21:37And suddenly, with the evidence of the death camps,
21:41people suddenly find themselves saying they're not people like us.
21:44These are people who have corrupted science and industry to create an edifice of evil,
21:50which the world has never known before.
21:54Eisenhower took great pains to publicize this, these atrocities and these discoveries.
21:59to both an American audience. He invited reporters and representatives of American
22:04government to come and tour these camps. But he also, in several famous instances,
22:09forced local Germans to see what had been done in their name.
22:13It was the beginning of a whole series of revelations for the German population
22:18about what exactly their government and the German people had done.
22:25News of the Nazi death camps is now relayed to the world by journalists,
22:30like Edward R. Murrow, who files an emotional broadcast from Buchenwald.
22:34The German people were in the world.
22:36The German people were in the world by the German people.
22:36God alone knows how many men and boys have died there during the last 12 years.
22:40Thursday, I was told that there were more than 20,000 in the camp.
22:45There had been as many as 60,000.
22:48Where are they now?
22:49I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald.
22:52I have reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it, I have no word.
23:05Far removed from the battlefields and concentration camps,
23:09President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is at his private retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia.
23:16Born in 1882, Roosevelt studied law at Harvard before entering politics as a New York Senator in 1910.
23:23He was Assistant Secretary of the Navy during the First World War.
23:28Elected President in 1932, Roosevelt introduced the New Deal,
23:32which helped Americans survive the hardships of the Great Depression.
23:36In 1936, he was re-elected in a landslide victory.
23:43Three years later, in one of his famous fireside chats,
23:47Roosevelt announced America's intention to remain neutral in the European War.
23:52But Pearl Harbor would change everything.
23:56December 7th, 1941.
24:02A date which will live in infamy.
24:08The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked.
24:15Despite being stricken by polio in 1921, leaving him paralysed,
24:19he often worked to the point of exhaustion, worrying his wife, Eleanor, and colleagues alike.
24:30But the photos of Roosevelt in 1945 are not of the strong-willed man who told the nation in 1933
24:37that the only thing to fear is fear itself.
24:41He visits his Georgia retreat to try to recover some strength.
24:45The warm water springs that run here are a source of comfort from the crippling pain caused by his polio.
24:51The 12th of April.
24:58The President wakes to the news that American troops have reached the Elba.
25:02He sits for a portrait by a painter named Elizabeth Shumatov while tending to State Department paperwork.
25:14As the artist begins on the background, Roosevelt suddenly raises his left hand to his forehead and remarks that he has a terrible headache.
25:23Then his arm falls to his side and his entire body goes limp.
25:273.35 p.m. Roosevelt is pronounced dead.
25:33The cause, a cerebral hemorrhage.
25:36The beloved 63-year-old President had been in the third month of his fourth term in office.
25:435.47 p.m. The White House notifies the major news agencies.
25:47The nation has lost a great leader.
25:57The President, who served his country longer than any in all history, and who served it well, is no more.
26:07News quickly reaches the Allied leaders.
26:10Churchill cries when he gives the House of Commons the news.
26:13He would later say that he felt as though he'd been struck a physical blow.
26:18Stalin, too, is moved by Roosevelt's passing.
26:22In an unprecedented move, he allows Russian newspapers to carry the story on the front page.
26:28Surprisingly to foreigners, the new Japanese Prime Minister, Admiral Suzuki, expresses condolences for America's loss.
26:36In Berlin, the Nazi leadership secretly delights in the news of Roosevelt's death.
26:43The death of Roosevelt for the Nazis was grasped, or rather seized upon, as a sign of providence.
26:52Himmler called Hitler at the Reichstag and said,
26:57Mein Fuhrer, mein Fuhrer, have you heard?
26:59This is a sign of destiny. It's a sign of providence.
27:02God has answered our prayers.
27:03This is the great miracle.
27:06Roosevelt, who was the love puppet of the Jews, is dead, and now there'll be a separate peace.
27:12And, of course, there wasn't, because Truman took over and the war went on as before.
27:15But I think that gives you the kind of mentality, looking for miracles, looking for some sort of extraordinary thing to happen right to the end.
27:22The 12th of April.
27:24As the world learns of Roosevelt's death, his vice president, Harry S. Truman, must assume command of the nation.
27:31President Roosevelt chose him as his running mate in 1944, replacing Henry Wallace.
27:36Truman had virtually no experience in foreign affairs, and many believed he lacked the tact and skill needed to be a world leader.
27:51Harry Truman had less political, social, intellectual qualifications to take that job than anybody imaginable.
28:02With Roosevelt's sudden death, Truman finds himself taking center stage in the greatest military conflict the world has ever known.
28:11Churchill is particularly concerned that Roosevelt had kept Truman in the dark in his decision-making process.
28:17Truman has never been in the White House war room, nor does he know about the atomic bomb project.
28:27He learns of it for the first time shortly after taking the oath of office on the 12th of April.
28:36The Secretary of War tells him cryptically about an immense project that is underway.
28:41A project looking to the development of a new explosive of almost unbelievable destructive power.
28:49Truman later tells reporters,
28:51Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now.
28:54When they told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon and the stars and the planets had fallen on me.
28:59I have done as you do in the field when the commander falls.
29:09I know the strain, the mud, the misery, the utter weariness of the soldier in the field.
29:17And I know too his courage, his stamina, and his faith in his comrades, his country, and himself.
29:27We are depending upon each and every one of you.
29:34The 13th of April.
29:36Many American troops serving overseas hear the momentous news for the first time.
29:43It affected me all. It really did.
29:45I just had to stop for a while and say prayer.
29:48I did because he was a great president. In my estimation, anyway, he's a great president, a great leader.
29:53I think we were getting ready to go on a mission and we heard on the radio that FDR had passed.
29:58That hit me a lot because FDR had been a real support of the black community.
30:04It was because of Franklin Roosevelt that we had the Tuskegee Airmen.
30:07He ordered them to break the prejudice and train us as fighter pilots.
30:11These guys have grown up in the Depression. Roosevelt was not just a president to them.
30:16They felt almost as if he was part of their family in some ways.
30:19There's never been a president in American history that has achieved as much and has been as beloved as Roosevelt.
30:27As America and the Allies mourn the death of a great man, the war continues.
30:32There is little time to pause for reflection.
30:35While it was a sorrowful situation to lose your commander in chief, you knew you had to finish the battle in his memory.
30:47The same day, news of a brutal forced march of Allied POWs across Europe hits the papers.
30:55Beginning in January, thousands of Allied prisoners of war were forced to march hundreds of miles in an effort to keep ahead of the Soviet advance.
31:03Exhaustion, starvation, sickness and brutal beatings claim thousands of lives and leave many survivors scarred.
31:16The 14th of April.
31:18Half a million people line the streets of the Capitol to pay their final respects to Franklin Roosevelt.
31:24His funeral is held in the East Room of the White House.
31:33Meanwhile, across Europe, fighting regiments on all fronts are counting down the days to the end of the war.
31:48But in the Pacific, the most savage combat is still to come.
31:52The 8th of April.
31:58Airfields on Kyushu, the southernmost island of Japan, are being used to launch kamikaze attacks on the Allied fleet.
32:06Now, they are targeted by B-29 bombers.
32:09192 tons of bombs fall on two airfields near Kanoya.
32:14Meanwhile, on Okinawa, only 350 miles south of the Japanese mainland, American troops are in their second week of fighting.
32:29The island is seen as the last stepping stone en route to mainland Japan.
32:33As American soldiers prepare to attack the Kakazu Ridge in the south,
32:44marines of the 6th Division start to clear the Motobu Peninsula in the northwest.
32:50They learn from prisoners that the enemy plans a guerrilla-style defense at the 1,200-foot-high Yataki Mountain.
32:57Lieutenant Colonel Takahiko Udu is in command of forces defending the peninsula.
33:06Many of his men are Okinawan conscripts, with little training.
33:10His troops have dug deep into the hills, where they have created a complex of tunnels and caves.
33:16From their high position, they can observe the approach of American troops.
33:20As the marines start their advance towards the mountain, they're greeted by small arms fire.
33:35They could emerge fire a shot, fire two shots, and withdraw back into the tunnel before they could be counterattacked by the Americans.
33:41The thing we probably weren't really prepared for is the massive amount of artillery and mortars which the Japanese had.
33:51Their tactics of attrition and holding these well-laid-out defensive positions would extract the heaviest toll on American casualties.
34:05The marines are left with few clear targets.
34:08Once we got into the open fields, the enemy that we could not see fired on us.
34:21We did know where they're coming from, the ridges, but we couldn't point them out.
34:25But we sent enough information back to artillery and our mortar positions to destroy that particular area.
34:33And thankfully, most of the time, it worked.
34:35So we were able to move on and go deeper into the enemy's domain.
34:44Carrier aircraft provide vital air support, spotting and attacking concealed targets.
34:50But it still takes the marines a week to fight their way to the base of Yataki Mountain.
34:55The 9th of April.
35:02Two battalions from the U.S. 96th Infantry Division lead the attack on the Shuri Line,
35:08where General Mitsuru Ushijima, under force of 65,000 men, lie in wait.
35:14The American objective is the Kakazou Ridge, 300 feet high and inaccessible to tanks.
35:22Pillboxes, tunnels and caves litter both the forward and reverse slopes.
35:27And carefully concealed machine guns and mortars infest the landscape.
35:31And as the Americans come over the top of the ridge and start going down the reverse slope,
35:37they'll run into other Japanese troops with artillery who have that terrain all registered
35:43and can shellack it with heavy fire.
35:46Also, the Japanese will know where the brakes are in the ridges,
35:50where the traffic flow is most likely to come,
35:52and they'll have their guns registered on that
35:54so they can inflict maximum damage on the Americans as they're trying to move forward.
36:00Before dawn, the G.I.s start their ascent,
36:03not knowing that the entrenched Japanese fighters are watching their every step.
36:07As the Americans climb, the entire hill is transformed into a killing zone.
36:13Strung out on the ridge, the American troops come under murderous machine gun and mortar fire.
36:18They take cover where they can,
36:20many making use of the burial tombs that cover the landscape.
36:24The most characteristic one we call the turtle-back tomb.
36:29And some Japanese troops use them for defensive positions too,
36:35and we use a lot of them for shelter.
36:40The wounded lie crying out for help,
36:42while the able-bodied are trapped and call out for smoke shells to cover their retreat.
36:49Many have to wait for the cover of darkness before they can pull back.
36:54By nightfall, the attacking regiment has suffered 23 dead,
37:07but a massive 256 men wounded.
37:10The Japanese have a victory,
37:12and the first attack on the Shuri line has been successfully repulsed.
37:16The Pacific War reaches a peak of intensity and savagery at Okinawa.
37:22Amongst the U.S. military,
37:24there will be 26,000 cases of combat fatigue,
37:27the most ever recorded.
37:28Some have called it the war with no mercy,
37:33and that pretty well describes it.
37:37There was no surrender on our part or the Japanese part,
37:42and if you're in a near hopeless situation,
37:46you fought your way out of it or you died.
37:49And you can't tell me that somebody was not afraid,
37:52because I bet everybody was afraid at some time or other.
37:55The following day, the Americans attack again with two regiments,
38:00preceded by a massive artillery bombardment.
38:03Only a part of the Kakazu Ridge is taken at high cost.
38:15Kamikaze attacks on Allied ships continue.
38:17Over the next three days,
38:19Japanese suicide pilots will wreck three destroyers and two other ships.
38:25The 11th of April.
38:33Japanese suicide attacks damage the American carrier Enterprise
38:36and the battleship Missouri.
38:41The 12th of April.
38:42The U.S. destroyer Manat El Abelay is sunk by a baka,
38:46a piloted suicide rocket launched from a mother aircraft.
38:50This is the only ship sunk by a baka in the war.
38:53The 14th of April.
38:58In the Ryukyu Islands,
39:00kamikazes damage the American battleship New York.
39:07This desperate resistance at sea and on land
39:10sends a clear message to the Allies.
39:13The Japanese are prepared to die in their thousands
39:16to defend their homeland.
39:17Next, on the last days of World War II,
39:24more concentration camps are liberated,
39:27including the infamous Bergen-Belsen.
39:31In the Pacific,
39:32the battle for Okinawa becomes a bloodbath.
39:35Any of the experiences that they might have had in other campaigns
39:37had nothing in common with what they were experiencing in Okinawa.
39:40It was just unprecedented in anyone's experience.
39:42It was just about a今天的 peace in the course instead.
39:43Now,
39:49we're not getting into experience.
39:52And now,
39:53There's one after aökull це where
40:00our bodies and bless
40:03and to behave
40:04will 16th of April.
40:06Well,
40:08these
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41:40
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