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00:00In a world gripped by tyranny, where power knows no bounds and liberty is seemingly beyond grasp, defiant freedom fighters emerge from the shadows to challenge the status quo.
00:12With unwavering determination, risking all and defying the odds, these are the stories of those who plotted the downfall of some of the world's most notorious regimes.
00:22Can a group of unlikely heroes change the course of history and successfully kill a dictator?
00:30The Civil War
00:44The Civil War
00:55November 1943, the Second World War has turned in the favor of the Allies.
01:02In Europe, the Western Coalition, spearheaded by the United Kingdom and the United States,
01:08have successfully invaded southern Italy and are pushing towards Rome.
01:13On the Eastern Front, the USSR has recently been victorious in the Battle of Kursk,
01:19the largest tank battle in world history.
01:22It was also one of the bloodiest, with the Russians and Germans taking roughly a million casualties combined.
01:28The fight is suicidal at this point.
01:32The Soviet army and civilians were taking enormous losses,
01:36much more than all the other Allied powers put together.
01:39The Soviets are starting to make headway in the East,
01:42but there needs to be cooperation amongst the three great powers to defeat the Nazi threat in Europe.
01:50Stalin desperately is asking Roosevelt and Churchill to approve a Second Front,
01:56to start squeezing the Germans from the West as he's squeezing them from the East.
02:02To bring about closer relations and to further cooperation of missions,
02:07the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
02:13proposed a meeting of the leaders of the big three nations,
02:17himself, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin.
02:20But Stalin was wary of a meeting and demanded it take place in a location he felt safe,
02:26the Iranian capital, Tehran.
02:28Stalin, who's the ultimate assassin himself, knows what the risk is for him traveling,
02:34and so he wants a safe location that he controlled.
02:38And Iran has a pro-Russian element, and there's a strong Russian presence there.
02:43Stalin feels that'll give him an advantage, not only safety-wise,
02:46but an advantage, perhaps, in the negotiations with Churchill and Roosevelt.
02:51But Nazi Germany has been covertly building its spy network in Tehran
02:56and have the big three in their crosshairs.
02:59Nazi Germany is very much against the ropes,
03:02and they're desperate to do whatever they can to roll back the tide.
03:06They begin planning what's called Operation Long Jump,
03:10and that's the assassination of Stalin or maybe Churchill or maybe even Roosevelt.
03:15Joseph Stalin, as the dictator of Russia, had come to embody the ideology of the state.
03:21And if Joseph Stalin was killed in Tehran,
03:24it would have thrown Russia into a state of chaos.
03:28Fear and paranoia were no strangers to Joseph Stalin.
03:32In the twists and turns of Soviet politics, he turned these weaknesses into strengths
03:37and, in part, aided him in his ambitious climb to the top of the Soviet Union.
03:42So Stalin's less-than-admirable character was forged in his early years.
03:47He's not a good student.
03:49His mother, ironically enough, wants him to join the clergy.
03:52He drops out. It's hard to imagine Stalin and the clergy.
03:55Stalin is interesting because he is Georgian, so he is not from the Russian core.
04:01of the Russian Empire.
04:03He hates Russians.
04:05He hates Russia.
04:06The Russian language is whipped into him in school
04:10because Russian is the language of the Empire, right?
04:13Stalin moves towards left-wing revolutionary parties really as a nationalist,
04:20as an anti-Moscow, anti-imperialist,
04:24not so much as a communist or a leftist revolution.
04:29That's what draws him to the Georgian revolutionary movement.
04:33In his formative years, Stalin initially identified strongly with Georgian nationalism.
04:39Yet, his ideological allegiance shifted when the Russian socialist movement
04:43broke into two warring factions, the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks.
04:48Stalin became inspired by the Bolsheviks' charismatic leader, Vladimir Lenin,
04:53and aligns himself with the Bolshevik cause.
04:56He is a significant presence in the Bolshevik movement.
04:59I would not call him one of the frontline members of the movement during the revolution,
05:05but he is the editor of Pravda, the newspaper of the Bolshevik party,
05:10and a member of the leadership circle.
05:14And in order to raise money for the movements, he resorts to robbing banks,
05:18kidnapping people and ransoming them.
05:20Stalin does time in jail, so this is not an honorable man.
05:23This is not an intellectual.
05:25And you can see his latter character being forged in these early experiences.
05:31Stalin faced multiple arrests for his revolutionary activities against the Russian Empire.
05:36He spent time in Siberia in exile.
05:39This bolstered his standing with Bolsheviks, and in his absence was elected onto the Central Committee.
05:45After his return in 1917, Stalin continued his rise within the Bolshevik party.
05:51However, by the time of his return, Russia was embroiled with the First World War,
05:56and widespread poverty, food shortages, and economic inequality prevailed.
06:01The Bolsheviks gained support among the discontented population,
06:05and Lenin's promise of peace, land, and bread resonated with the masses.
06:10On October 25, 1917, the Russian Revolution erupts, and Stalin has a key part to play.
06:17Propaganda was an essential instrument for the Bolsheviks as they tried to convince the Russian people and Russian soldiers to abandon the war effort and rise up against the government.
06:32And Stalin's role as the editor of the major newspaper was central to that.
06:38In the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Communist victory in the Russian Civil War, Stalin is one of the four men who now leads the new Bolshevik state.
06:48Stalin became part of an informal foursome, which includes Leon Trotsky, Yakov Sverdlov, and the leader of the Bolsheviks, Vladimir Lenin.
06:59Of course, Stalin wants to rule eventually as part of this cult of personality that a lot of dictators have, making himself larger than life, legendary exploits.
07:10So there's two versions of Stalin's role in the October Revolution.
07:14There's his version, where he says he was a centerpiece of it and he was actively involved.
07:19His detractors, opponents, critics, led by Trotsky, the intellectual, say Stalin's role was not nearly as important as he said.
07:27What is the truth? One is more apt to believe Trotsky than anything Stalin says, probably somewhere in between.
07:34With the collapse of the Russian Empire, the Bolsheviks spearheaded the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR,
07:43incorporating countries such as Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus into the Soviet Union,
07:49although Stalin's heritage was limiting his chance to take center stage.
07:53Stalin didn't give too many speeches in the Soviet Union because he spoke with a very thick Georgian accent.
08:00And so Lenin likes that in a way because Lenin is an internationalist.
08:04We want every ethnicity in the party's movement.
08:07This is about workers' revolution that we're going to bring to Russia.
08:12It is during this time that Stalin's personal feud with Trotsky would begin to cause friction in the party.
08:18There was a fundamental ideological divide between Trotsky and Stalin.
08:24Trotsky believed in permanent revolution, in the idea that capitalism was a global system and that the Bolshevik revolution would not survive if it was confined to Russia.
08:37Stalin, on the other hand, believed ultimately in the construction of socialism in one country,
08:44that the Soviet Union could become the flagship of world socialism.
08:53At the 11th Party Congress in 1922, Lenin nominated Stalin as the party's new general secretary.
09:00Everybody wants to be the minister of defense. Everybody wants to be the foreign minister. Nobody wants to be the secretary.
09:10And Stalin says, I'll be the secretary. And as secretary, Stalin now accumulates enormous power over the careers of Communist Party members.
09:23This gives him immense influence within the party and the nation.
09:28And when Lenin dies in 1924, it is Stalin, not Trotsky, who would become the leader of the USSR.
09:35To gain the upper hand, Stalin claims Trotsky is fostering divisive tendencies within the party rather than promoting unity.
09:44There is a big power struggle amongst the Soviet leadership and Stalin wins out and uses exile as a way of cementing authoritarian control.
09:56And that means, in particular, purging the system of more radical elements like Trotsky.
10:03While in exile, Trotsky lives in many countries, including Turkey, France and Norway, before eventually settling in Mexico in 1937.
10:13From here, Trotsky will plot from afar for Stalin's downfall.
10:18And I'm sure Stalin really regretted this. And I think partly because Stalin had not yet quite consolidated all his power.
10:25Because then he decided, oh man, I should have just killed this guy. That's the way to go.
10:29However, as Trotsky formulates his plans, others have the same idea.
10:34And one of Stalin's old enemies stalks him from the shadows, ready to strike.
10:38There would end up being many assassination attempts on Stalin.
10:42Maybe the first was in 1931 by a man named Leonid Ogareff.
10:48Ogareff is very interesting as a person. He was a czarist. He worked for the czar.
10:53He was a part of the old regime before the Bolshevik Revolution.
10:56Anybody that was a czarist was either dead or on the outskirts of society.
11:00He flees to Britain and he's recruited as a British asset.
11:04And if they ever need to do something about Stalin, he's an asset on the ground.
11:09November 16th, 1931. The frigid air of Moscow cloaks the city as Joseph Stalin ventures out for a stroll.
11:17He doesn't go anywhere without armed guards, bodyguards and intelligence on it.
11:23So Stalin is a really difficult target to hit.
11:27Suddenly, a figure emerges from the shadows, striding towards Stalin, a revolver in his grasp.
11:34So this plot was not planned. Ogareff is out taking a walk, happens to have a pistol, so it's not thought through.
11:40He pulls the pistol and tries to shoot Stalin. Stalin has bodyguards, police, security.
11:45One of them tackles him, takes him to the ground and disarms him. And the plot fails.
11:51It turns out that Stalin's secret police had been following him and tracking him and probably knew that he was working with the British.
11:58They were ready for him.
12:00Ogareff was convicted of terrorism and espionage and executed.
12:05The Ogareff assassination attempt is a bombshell for the Soviet Union.
12:10Afterwards, Stalin orders for his protection to be stepped up.
12:15So the NKVD was founded in 1934 and it functioned both as Stalin's personal protectors,
12:23but also as a network of informants, as a secret police, as a repressive tool used against dissenters
12:34within the system.
12:36With the NKVD, Stalin had an iron curtain of protection that made him seem invincible to the plots of would-be assassins.
12:44When you think they couldn't have been any more secure, any more eavesdropping, intelligence, security,
12:50now Stalin makes it even more aggressive because of his paranoia.
12:54But this protection did not extend to members of Stalin's inner circle.
12:58One of the political leaders of the Soviet Union was a man named Kirov.
13:02He was a close ally with Stalin's.
13:05In 1934, he's assassinated in his office.
13:10And this sets off shock waves through the Soviet establishment.
13:14The assassination provided Stalin with a pretext to initiate a purge of his political adversaries.
13:20Although, many historians believe it was Stalin that was behind Kirov's murder as a means to crack down on rivals and dissidents.
13:29In December 1934, 14 high-ranking members of the Communist Party loyal to Trotsky are put on trial.
13:36They're accused of conspiring to assassinate Stalin.
13:39The rumor was that Trotskyist elements were organizing in Oslo to stage an attempt on Stalin's life,
13:47and that they were meeting at a hotel, at the Bristol Hotel.
13:51Photographic evidence, however, demonstrates that the hotel had been bulldozed by that point.
13:57It suggests that many of these rumors were fabricated by the NKVD,
14:01and that they were fabricated because central to the cementing of a dictator's power is the constant search for internal and external enemies.
14:11For finding new plots against which to mobilize authority.
14:18The trial starts at 5.45 a.m. on December 29th.
14:22Soon after, the verdict is pronounced, sealing their fate with a death sentence.
14:27Within an hour, the execution by firing squad is carried out.
14:32Show trials were performances designed both to highlight the threat posed to the Soviet Union by internal and external enemies.
14:44The Moscow trials were just the beginning of Stalin's rush to centralize power in his hands and his hands alone.
14:52The murder of Kirov inaugurated a new phase of paranoia and internal repression for the Soviet Union, the era of the Great Purge.
15:09Stalin starts with senior communist leaders and really is rounding everybody up.
15:14There's mass arrests, mass detentions, mass executions, anyone that was disloyal or perceived of being disloyal.
15:23A blanket of fear and terror suffocates the USSR.
15:27But it expands, not just Soviet officials, but bureaucrats, but generals, and it just expands and expands and expands.
15:34Every facet of Soviet society, people were purged.
15:38You end up getting into a very chaotic social situation in the sense that to prove that you aren't the target of the purge, you almost have to prove your loyalty by finding somebody else who could be the target of the purge.
15:54You're either one of us or one of them.
15:56And the only way to prove you're one of us is to point out one of them.
15:59It encouraged neighbors to report on one another, for children to denounce their parents.
16:07And also within the old Bolshevik elite, including many who had built the revolution,
16:14it was a power struggle between the old Bolsheviks and the newer guard around Stalin.
16:21By 1940, the purge had begun to wear the USSR down.
16:26Thousands of military officers, artists, bureaucrats, and academics had either been killed or deported to gulags, hard labor camps.
16:35The state of terror weakened the USSR greatly.
16:39So Stalin realizes how unpopular this is, so he does what almost all dictators do.
16:44He blames his right-hand man.
16:46Stalin lays all the blame on NKVD boss Nikolai Yezhov.
16:51Yezhov was maybe the second most powerful person in the Soviet Union.
16:56Arrests him, and obviously under torture and duress, he makes Yezhov admit that everything was his fault,
17:03that he acted illegally and he killed innocent people, so Stalin offs him.
17:08And that's but one of many senior advisers to Stalin who would end up paying the ultimate price.
17:15On February 4, 1940, Yezhov is executed.
17:20He's replaced by his deputy, Lavrenti Beria.
17:23Stalin calls Lavrenti Beria into his office and says to Beria,
17:30make sure you double the numbers that Yezhov killed or I'm going to do to you what I just did to Yezhov.
17:35I'm going to put you in the gulag.
17:36Yezhov would not be the last of the old guard to die in 1940.
17:40Stalin's reign of terror obviously puts all of the Soviet Union under his thumb.
17:45You're either arrested, purged, executed, or exiled.
17:50But the limits of his power don't end at his borders.
17:53Stalin's biggest rival once upon a time and critic and polar opposite is the intellectual Trotsky,
17:58who's forced to flee in exile.
18:00He ends up in Mexico, but Trotsky's not quiet.
18:03He continues to warn the world and the Soviet people about how evil Stalin is.
18:09Trotsky buys it as well.
18:11An assassin is sent and using a brutal ice axe, puts it in Trotsky's head and that's the end of him.
18:18With his enemies purged, Stalin now rules supreme in the Soviet Union,
18:23but his iron grip on the nation faces its greatest threat.
18:27In the early hours of June 22, 1941, Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany invades the Soviet Union,
18:35ending a non-aggression pact agreed upon two years before.
18:39Hitler, in an act of great megalomania that would ultimately unravel Nazi Germany,
18:44decides to invade the Soviet Union.
18:47In June of 1941, Operation Barbarossa.
18:52As is often the case with these dictators, there's no room for two dictators.
18:57They don't trust one another.
18:59Stalin loathed Hitler, saw him as far less than him.
19:03Hitler loathed Stalin, saw him as far less than him.
19:06Their temporary alliance was just a purely political and security marriage.
19:10It was inevitable that they were going to come to blows.
19:13Stalin renames the great city of Stalingrad.
19:16Hitler cannot wait to seize Stalingrad and personally embarrass Stalin.
19:22So there's a personal aspect to this war between these two roosters circling one another at the beginning of the war.
19:31The German invasion caught Stalin very much off guard, even though he never trusted Hitler.
19:38The Soviet defenses were not nearly prepared.
19:44Soviet planes were bombed on the ground.
19:47Soviet troops were routed from many positions.
19:51And there was a massive retreat eastward to consolidate their position.
19:58By purging so many brilliant military minds, when World War II begins, the Soviets are utterly unprepared.
20:05They have a leadership deficit. There's an intellectual brain drain.
20:09Stalin was devastated when he realized that somebody that he held in such low regard was able to threaten Mother Russia and really bring Europe to its knees.
20:21Stalin is shattered by the early German gains.
20:25And he retreats to his dacha, his country house, and drinks heavily and reflects that Lenin had left them a great legacy and that they have mucked it all up.
20:40By June 30th, Stalin was visited by his inner circle, who urged him to get back to work.
20:47The disheveled Stalin finally agreed.
20:50With Stalin back in the fight, the Soviets begin to slowly turn the tide of war.
20:55And by 1943, they had successfully pushed the Germans out of much of their territory.
21:00Some of that mobilization by Russian forces is the direct consequence and result of Russia's propaganda machine, which is running in overdrive at this point in time.
21:11And Stalin, as the dictator, is presenting himself as a hero.
21:16He's presenting himself using terms like the man of steel.
21:19Russia is a massive bear.
21:22They have a lot of people, and they're on the defensive.
21:26They're protecting their homes with a strong, charismatic leader who is considered the man of steel, the man who will not bend or break.
21:34And that is worth a lot of morale.
21:37One of Stalin's solutions was to issue Order 227, the so-called No Step Back Order, which threatened Soviet troops with execution if they were seen as retreating ahead of enemy forces.
21:51So don't worry about the enemy killing you, worry about me killing you.
21:56Now, at a critical time of the war, as Nazis push Russian forces back in the East, Stalin wants the British and Americans to create a second front in Western Europe.
22:06And Roosevelt, the President of the United States, wants a face-to-face meeting.
22:11Stalin agrees, but it would be on his terms, and the meeting had to be in Tehran.
22:16Iran, once the war broke out, is occupied jointly by the Soviets and the British and then Americans.
22:25So it's a territory that's under U.S. control to prevent Germany from getting their hands on it.
22:31The stakes at Tehran are extremely high.
22:34The Soviets are starting to make headway in the East.
22:38But there needs to be cooperation amongst the three great powers in order to finally defeat the Nazi threat in Europe.
22:48In advance of the meeting, there's tensions, however.
22:51Stalin wants Churchill and Roosevelt to open up a Western Front immediately.
22:56The Soviets have been on the receiving end of the brunt of the Nazi war machine.
23:00Churchill, however, is going into the meeting with no intention to open up a cross-channel invasion.
23:06Yet, it's too early.
23:08However, the Allies were not the only ones with a strong presence in Tehran.
23:13For years, Nazi spies had been building a network of sympathizers and operatives, embittered by the presence of Western powers.
23:21Now is their chance to strike, and Stalin is in their crosshairs.
23:26Iranians are chafing under British oil company domination.
23:31So they already have that beef with British Petroleum, BP, at that time.
23:36Or the Anglo-Iranian Company, as it was known back then, before it became British Petroleum.
23:41So already there's a lot of political hostility to Britain as an ally.
23:46So it was easy for the Germans to already build that network.
23:51So they had a lot of Iranian agents, they had a lot of German agents already, and intelligence officers operating.
23:57So the Nazis have a very valuable asset in Tehran. His name is Franz Meyer.
24:01He's their station chief, if you will. He's their top spy.
24:04He knows the city, he knows the targets, he knows the roads, has control over some communications, transportation system, and a whole network of spies.
24:13January 1943. A German radio station, in their normal schedule, broadcast a secret code for mayor.
24:21He is activated. He is to prepare his network and wait for further instructions, as the Nazis have received intelligence of a meeting between the big three that's being arranged in the Iranian capital.
24:32Tehran turns out to not be such a great location for Stalin to meet with the other two leaders because of the Cicero affair.
24:40An agent gets access to the British Embassy in Turkey.
24:44He breaks in, he photographs intelligence documents and other codes that alerts him that Stalin is coming to Tehran.
24:53He then passes on this information, which sets off the motion to assassinate Stalin while he's there.
25:00In the late fall of 1943, Franz Meyer's instructions come through.
25:06German paratroopers dressed in Soviet uniforms were on their way to Tehran.
25:10And their mission is the assassination of Joseph Stalin.
25:14If successful, Nazi Germany could change the tide of the Second World War.
25:19It seems as if it's not if, but when. The Nazis are going to lose the war. So they need something big in 1943.
25:25The Nazi plan hopes that the killing of Stalin will cause upheaval within the Soviet government.
25:31You get a power vacuum. And so you have all these powerful, smart people that Stalin appointed behind him, but now one of them wants to be in Stalin's place.
25:41And so they're all now going at each other instead of fighting the Germans.
25:46The Nazis dubbed the plan Utterneemen Weitzbrung, or Operation Long Jump.
25:51And the man the Nazis tasked with plotting this mission was Otto Skorzeni.
25:56A figure bestowed with the accolade, the most dangerous man in Europe.
26:01What makes the kind of James Bond attack in Tehran plausible is what Scorsese actually did, the rescue of Mussolini.
26:09Mussolini, when Italy was invaded, was arrested, and he's held in this inaccessible mountain retreat.
26:17And the Nazis want to break him out and Scorsese pulls it off, but it's how he pulls it off.
26:21Hang gliders crash into a mountain, commandos hiking through the woods, he breaks in and liberates Mussolini.
26:28The Nazis' plot to assassinate Stalin is daring, and the commandos entrusted to carry it out know it's most likely a one-way mission.
26:38One of the ways to assure that your assassination plot works is to not just have one plot.
26:44So Skorzeni's plot is twofold. One is the big three are going to be traveling by car to their meeting.
26:50Therefore, they could hit him while they're on route.
26:53One of the concerns about Tehran are the streets. They're just way too crowded.
26:57And that makes it dangerous to transport the big three through these very crowded streets, pedestrian traffic, bicycles, and so on.
27:03But the Nazi commanders are also concerned about it.
27:06If the streets are that crowded, what if they can't get to the convoy? What if they can't get to the target?
27:10And after the hit, how do they get out?
27:12So Skorzeni has a second operation planned if the first one fails.
27:16As by luck, while in Tehran, Churchill will be celebrating his birthday at a dinner to be held at the British Consulate.
27:23They could use the water system, the water pipes, which would take them underground and emerge into the British Embassy where Winston Churchill and the big three would be celebrating Churchill's birthday.
27:34The first wave of Nazi commandos are on their way, packed into a military cargo plane.
27:40After crossing the Albor's mountain range outside of Tehran, they're now in target of their drop site.
27:46One by one, they leap out of the plane. Behind them, cargo and military gear, including guns and high explosives, are dropped.
27:54In total, 38 Nazi commandos and their weapons have just landed in the desert around Tehran. Their mission is underway.
28:03Meanwhile, Skorzeni and the second team are on standby in Germany, ready to lead the assault on Churchill's birthday if the first plot fails.
28:12On the 28th of November, it is agreed that Churchill and Roosevelt would meet Stalin at the Soviet Embassy.
28:18The Secret Service and Stalin's NKVD hatch a plan to secure Roosevelt as he travels to the Soviet compound.
28:26Stalin is keen on getting some one-on-one time with FDR and trying to schmooze FDR.
28:32The Soviet Army has lost millions. Stalin wants the Allies to open up a Western Front to take the pressure off the Soviet Union, which is the Eastern Front in a Nazi war apparatus.
28:43FDR is potentially amenable. Churchill's dead set against it.
28:47So Stalin has a keen interest in seeing FDR safe and seeing FDR as an ally to get the Allies to open up that Western Front.
28:55The Nazi commandos are now embedded in the capital and all eyes are on the streets waiting for the opportunity to strike at Stalin or, given half the chance, Churchill or Roosevelt.
29:06An important Soviet general looks at the city and realizes the streets are not good for transporting world leaders, that there could be a hit on the way.
29:15So he warns FDR staff to make other plans, and they do. They set up a fake convoy. While the fake convoy is moving through the streets, FDR is whisked in a secret route to the meeting.
29:27To secure the protection of Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill during their time in Tehran, the key to neutralizing any German threat lies in capturing the Nazi spy, Franz Mayer.
29:38The British get a break. Mayer's longtime girlfriend, Tehran native Lily Sanjari, is having an affair with an American GI named Robert Merrick.
29:48But Merrick is no regular soldier. Merrick is an American undercover agent.
29:53So we have a situation where Mayer's girlfriend is upset because he tells her that he can't marry her because of Germany's race laws.
30:01And as a result, she's now finding somebody else outside of that relationship who happens to be an American GI who's also a spy.
30:12He is building up a relationship of trust with her to get information about Mayer.
30:17So it's amazing what information transpires during pillow talk. So now the Americans are clued as to what's potentially going to happen.
30:25Thanks to his relationship drama, Mayer has been exposed as a Nazi spy. He goes underground, hiding in the homes of Nazi sympathizers in Tehran.
30:36But allied intelligence agencies are on the hunt. If they can find Mayer, they might be able to stop the plot to kill Stalin.
30:44In the meantime, there are still dozens of Nazi commandos in Tehran. The hunt for those soldiers is taken street by street by Stalin's secret police, the NKVD, who recruit the most unlikely of agents, local boys on bicycles known as the Light Cavalry.
31:01An ingenious move by the NKVD was to employ local youths as their eyes and ears who knew Tehran like the back of their hands, who rode around on bikes through back alleys, keeping close track of the German population in the city.
31:20You're putting them to work in a place where they blend in, where they're not going to stick out. So it's an interesting approach to get the city to work for you.
31:30While the NKVD is busy on the streets of Tehran, the big three begin their conference and Stalin's big demand, the opening of a second major front in Europe.
31:42One would think that at a meeting of the big three that Stalin would be the odd man out. Churchill and FDR had a relationship and of course their kindred spirits and representing democracies.
31:53However, it's Churchill that's kind of the odd man out.
31:56As an old conservative, Churchill was resolutely anti-communist and saw Stalin as the Antichrist incarnate. Churchill represented everything that was wrong with the capitalist West as far as Stalin was concerned.
32:10Additionally, Churchill's focus had always been on the Mediterranean and opening up a second front there in Italy. That front would not, in Stalin's view, have been large enough to represent a major pressure release valve for what he was contending with in the East.
32:31While the drama of the Tehran Conference unfolds, a very different narrative is taking place in the streets of Tehran, where Nazi agents and commandos are in a cat and mouse game with Stalin's NKVD.
32:43However, the Nazi plot to eliminate Stalin suffers a major setback as German spy Franz Mayer breaks cover, presenting the NKVD with a chance to capture him, an opportunity they cannot afford to miss.
32:56By losing an agent like Mayer, the Germans are effectively deprived of their eyes and ears on the ground.
33:03With Mayer off the streets, the Nazi plot has suffered a major setback. The light cavalry continue to move through Tehran on the hunt for the commandos.
33:16From the light cavalry, these boys on bikes, the NKVD has captured almost all of the Nazi commandos, all but six.
33:23So now they rely on the light cavalry again, turning the boys loose and Soviet agents loose to round up the remaining six Nazi commandos before they can assassinate Stalin.
33:33Despite the German commandos failing to strike Stalin, Churchill and FDR during their motorcades, the Nazis still see an opportunity to attack during Churchill's upcoming birthday celebration.
33:45Because it's Churchill's birthday party, FDR is going to be there, Stalin is going to be there, and of course they are, they end up seated together.
33:55So there's a lot of revelry at Churchill's birthday party. Churchill finally relaxes a bit, Stalin relaxes a bit, they're all getting drunk.
34:03Who's not enjoying themselves at the Secret Service? All three of them are in the same room, and the city is crawling with Nazis.
34:10What a perfect place to pop up undetected and assassinate Stalin or maybe all three of the Allied leaders.
34:17While the preparation of Churchill's birthday party is underway, the NKVD's light cavalry moved through the streets of Tehran, searching for the missing six Nazi commandos.
34:28During his patrol, light cavalry member Gevork Vartanian hears the distinctive sound of radio communication coming from a villa. The language spoken is German.
34:39And it sounds like it's issuing a command. That obviously attracts his attention. He's trying to find Nazi commandos hiding.
34:45Vartanian immediately suspects that these are the people he's tracking. He speeds off immediately to his NKVD handlers.
34:55According to Soviet sources, the Russians had an agent with deep cover in the German high command, who received information about Operation Long Jump and Skorzeny's role in the plot.
35:07With time ticking, the NKVD have to make a decision. Do they move in now, or do they wait for the big fish, Otto Skorzeny, to strike?
35:16According to the NKVD, Vartanian leads them to this villa. They burst in, arrest the commandos inside.
35:27With the remaining Nazi commandos captured, there is still the threat of Skorzeny, the most dangerous man in Europe, arriving in Tehran to carry out the assassination of Stalin.
35:37Assassinating a dictator is difficult. But the thing to remember is you only need one. One person, one bullet, one plot. So if enough efforts are thrown at an assassination attempt, one of them may come through.
35:52Despite the danger, Churchill's birthday party continues as planned.
35:57Back at the Nazi commandos' villa, the NKVD make a crucial decision to ensure Stalin's safety.
36:04The NKVD forced them to send a radio message back to Berlin saying that they have been captured and that the plan is off.
36:12According to sources, Skorzeny's team is never activated, and this is thanks to the efforts of Vartanian and the NKVD.
36:20Operation Long Jump has failed, and Stalin, FDR, and Churchill are about to make decisions that will forever change history.
36:28The Tehran Conference is pivotal above all because it's here really where we get the determination to move ahead with Operation Overlord, the landing of Allied forces in Normandy, ultimately what we will call D-Day.
36:44The 6th of June, 1944, D-Day. Operation Overlord is launched. Over 150,000 Allied troops and nearly 200,000 naval personnel of the American, British, and Canadian armed forces storm the beaches of northern France and create Stalin's desired second major front.
37:05Late 1944, the Allies push against the Nazis from both the East and the West, and the war looks lost.
37:12But even now, the Nazis and their commando leader, Otto Skorzeny, are about to unleash another plot to eliminate Stalin.
37:20Skorzeny is also running something called Operation Zeppelin, where they're going to re-infiltrate Soviet POWs who volunteered to serve on the German side.
37:34And Skorzeny is now training these individuals to, since they can speak Russian naturally, they know what the local customs are and so forth, to return back into the Soviet Union to operate as assassins and get to Stalin as well.
37:49Taking on the bold mission of Operation Zeppelin was Shiloh, a former Soviet officer.
37:55So what we know about Shiloh is that he harbored anti-Stalinist and anti-Soviet viewpoints, that he was certainly familiar with the structures of the Soviet military, and would be an ideal candidate for a plot against Stalin.
38:13Taking the name and identity of a dead Russian major, Shiloh prepares for his mission and is trained by Otto Skorzeny.
38:22For this mission, Shiloh is equipped with pistols, one loaded with poison bullets and the other explosive bullets.
38:29He's also armed with a grenade launcher with rounds that can pierce 40-millimeter armor from a distance of up to 300 meters.
38:37Shiloh's wife, Lydia Yakovlevna, a skilled radio operator, will accompany him.
38:43Her expertise will be crucial in coordinating any attempt to target Stalin.
38:48But first, the pair would need to enter the Soviet Union.
38:51So the plan is for Shiloh and his wife to fly from Riga in Latvia to Moscow to carry out an attack on Stalin at the anniversary celebrations for the October Revolution.
39:06Upon taking off, his aircraft is hit by anti-aircraft fire, crash lands in Smolensk, 400 kilometers from Moscow.
39:16Shiloh and Lydia are able to escape by stealing a Russian M72 motorcycle with a sidecar, propelling themselves closer to Moscow.
39:25But fate has other plans.
39:27A vigilant patrol halts their progress, and their suspicious demeanor leads to their arrest.
39:33Even as a Russian coming back in uniform of the Soviet Union, everyone is so suspicious of each other.
39:40Everyone is checking papers. It's not easy.
39:43Operation Zeppelin has met its demise.
39:46And eight months after Shiloh's failed assassination mission against Stalin, the war in Europe is over.
39:52On May 8, 1945, the Nazi war machine is in ruins.
39:57And Hitler, Stalin's bitter rival, is dead.
40:00But with a great victory came a great cost to Stalin and the Soviet people.
40:05So much has been written, forests fell to fill the pages of books on World War II.
40:12But equally important is what happens after the war.
40:15The toll of the Second World War on the Soviet Union is staggering, both in terms of military and civilian deaths.
40:24Estimates vary from somewhere in the neighborhood of 19 to 27 million people.
40:29And the country was left in utter ruins.
40:33If you look at cities like Stalingrad above all, the Soviets bore the cost of the Second World War more than any other country.
40:43In the aftermath of the conflict, Stalin is now the undisputed master of the Eastern Bloc, a collection of communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe that were created after the Second World War.
40:56These include East Germany, Poland, Romania and Hungary.
41:01After the defeat of the Nazis, Stalin's place in the Soviet Union is as the Generalissimo, one who led us to victory.
41:11Everywhere you see images of Stalin, Stalin statues, Stalin posters.
41:16He now becomes this super-powered hero.
41:20He is the Soviet Union.
41:21The Soviet Union is him.
41:22And his cult of personality, his stature, has just grown immeasurably.
41:26He is one of the most powerful and influential people in the world at this time.
41:30He defeated the Nazis.
41:33By the late 1940s, the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin has been transformed from an underdeveloped country to the most powerful nation in Europe.
41:43However, as Soviet power rises, Stalin's health begins to falter, leading to a period in the early 1950s when the physicians of Moscow would face the formidable wrath of the Man of Steel.
41:55Although Stalin emerges as being entirely victorious at the end of World War II, of course, his health at the same time doesn't keep up with him.
42:04And it starts to decline.
42:05He is diagnosed with a condition known as arteriosclerosis.
42:10At this time, the NKVD, Russia's principal intelligence-gathering organization, is divided into two groups, the MVD and the MBG.
42:21Unfortunately, these two factions compete for resources and have overlapping jurisdictions.
42:27Which creates a kind of competition for which organization has the ear of the dictator compared to the other.
42:34And so at this time, there are no consistent intelligence reports being given to Stalin with respect to his health.
42:43And what he's hearing from one of the intelligence groups is that perhaps the doctors were out to get him and that they were purposefully misdiagnosing his health conditions.
42:54This is very clearly an instance where Stalin's paranoia was preyed upon by those in his inner circle.
43:01Stalin very quickly comes to believe that it is perhaps his doctors that are out to kill him and that in fact that this is another systematic assassination attempt against his life.
43:14Stalin has a long distrust of doctors that goes back to the very earliest days of his reign of terror.
43:21He's going to doctors who are starting to label him with psychiatric disorders, with negative personality traits like megalomania and paranoia.
43:31And these things are chinks in your mental fortress.
43:36They're saying that you're not as mentally strong as you think you are.
43:41This affects his image as a person, as the Man of Steel.
43:45Those implicated in the doctors' plot faced arrest and endured rigorous interrogation.
43:51Some are pressured into making false confessions, implicating themselves and others in the alleged scheme.
43:57However, by 1953, the case against the doctors abruptly halted with Stalin's death.
44:03It doesn't help his cause that in the doctors' purge, Stalin kills probably the doctor and doctors that would have saved his life.
44:12There are many rumors that swirl around the death of Stalin.
44:16One is that he accidentally poisoned himself.
44:19Another is that he was assassinated by rivals in the security services.
44:23And of course, he could have died of natural causes.
44:26He was the Man of Steel.
44:28The idea that such a man dies just by natural causes is a bit hard to believe.
44:33Legends meet legendary demises.
44:36And so that can lead to all of these other speculations, stories about what might have happened instead.
44:42Stalin's successor was former NKVD boss Levrenti Beria.
44:47But he faced opposition from other members of the political leadership.
44:51Many wanted to break away from the repressive policies of the Stalin era.
44:56And in the chaos that followed the death of Stalin,
44:58Maria will fall victim to political maneuvers orchestrated by a Soviet politician, Nikita Khrushchev.
45:05Khrushchev and his supporters inside Stalin's inner circle and their allies inside the Red Army
45:11led a palace coup against Maria and his MVD on June 26, 1953.
45:16Maria and his officers are tried and executed that day.
45:20The era of Stalin and the reign of terror is over.
45:23Stalin is succeeded by Khrushchev, who is an entirely different man,
45:28who does not believe in associating the Soviet Union with the kind of violence and regime of terror that Russia had experienced under Stalin.
45:39So in 1956, Nikita Khrushchev, the new Communist Party leader,
45:45gives a speech to the Party Congress denouncing the Stalinist cult of personality
45:52and the repressions of the Stalinist era, effectively ending the Stalinist phase in the Soviet Union.
46:01It then puts everybody who was trained by Stalin, who was involved with Stalin,
46:06that inner cadre, the ones who could compete with Khrushchev to maintain control of the country,
46:12it taints them by association.
46:14So he's poisoning the well and anybody who drank from it.
46:18Joseph Stalin ruled with an iron fist and terror.
46:24All those who tried to bring his reign to an early end perished in their attempts.
46:29While he was a bloody dictator, he was also the primary antagonist of Adolf Hitler.
46:35Under Stalin's leadership, the USSR defeated the Nazis at a great cost to the Soviet people.
46:41Stalin found the USSR in a weakened state when he took control in the late 1920s
46:47and left it one of the most powerful and technologically advanced nations on Earth
46:52by the year of his death in 1953.
46:54We'd have to ask the millions who paid with their lives whether the cost was worth it or not.
47:24Ones of the Republic
47:26Ones of the Republic
47:27Ones of the Republic
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