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01:59and the Allied forces in the west had assembled near the Rhine for the final push into Germany.
02:04In the north were the amassed ranks of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's 21st Army Group.
02:14To its south was General Omar Bradley's 12th Army Group.
02:23It included the U.S. 3rd Army, commanded by General George Patton.
02:31On February 8th, Montgomery's Army Group launched a two-pronged assault on German forces defending the Rhine.
02:44The northern prong had to fight its way through the wooded countryside.
02:50The southern prong was delayed when the Germans released water from a series of dams flooding the surrounding area.
03:04It would be over two weeks before the two prongs met up on the west bank of the Rhine.
03:17By early March 1945, Montgomery's forces were in control of some 60 miles of the west bank of the river.
03:25The next task was to cross it.
03:37South of Montgomery, Bradley's armies were also moving eastwards, looking for a route across the river.
03:44On March 7th, 1945, they reached the Rhine at Cologne.
03:57But Hitler had ordered all the bridges to be destroyed.
04:00Then, as the U.S. forces explored further south, they found one bridge still intact, near the small town of Remagen.
04:21They made a dash for it, brushing aside German resistance.
04:30Then, just as they were about to cross it, there was an explosion.
04:44But, against the odds, the bridge remained standing.
04:49A small group of Americans raced across it, desperately cutting any wires that looked like demolition cables.
04:56U.S. commanders began to push men across as fast as possible.
05:07The Allies had, at last, penetrated the German heartland.
05:17In Berlin, news of the capture of the bridge at Remagen infuriated Hitler.
05:21Five junior officers were court-martialed.
05:29Four were shot.
05:34In addition, the long-suffering German commander in the west, Field Marshal Gert von Rundstedt, was sacked.
05:41It was the second time it had happened to him in less than a year.
05:44He was replaced by veteran commander, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, who'd been in overall charge in North Africa and Italy.
06:01Over the next week, the Germans launched desperate air attacks to try and destroy the bridge at Remagen.
06:07None of them succeeded.
06:17Then, suddenly, on March the 17th, while combat engineers were repairing it, the bridge unexpectedly collapsed.
06:25Twenty-eight men plunged to their deaths.
06:36The first Allied thrust into Germany had been blocked.
06:47Meanwhile, further north, Montgomery was preparing the first full-scale Allied crossing of the Rhine.
06:53On March the 23rd, 1945, he launched an aerial bombardment on German forces defending the east bank of the river.
07:11Some 200 RAF Lancaster bombers virtually flattened the town of Wiesel.
07:16Then, British commandos in Buffalo amphibious vehicles crossed.
07:29They met little opposition from the dazed German defenders.
07:38Other divisions followed.
07:39The crossing lasted all night.
07:46The crossing lasted all night.
07:46The following day, in the largest airborne operation of the war, 17,000 men of British 6th and U.S. 17th Airborne Divisions were dropped to seize key positions east of the river.
08:10They were met by heavy German anti-aircraft fire.
08:19A newsreel report told the story.
08:31In a short time, hundreds of gliders make their hazardous landings.
08:34There are men beginning the fight as soon as they land.
08:37One glider has its wings shot away when only 50 feet from the ground.
08:41More than half the gliders were destroyed or damaged before landing.
08:57But within hours, the paratroopers linked up with Montgomery's land forces and the Allied bridgehead was secured.
09:04It should have been, for the ferociously competitive Montgomery, a moment of glory.
09:13But he'd been upstaged.
09:17The night before, his great rival, General Patton, had unexpectedly crossed the Rhine near Oppenheim and had already entered Germany.
09:26It was a sign of the intense rivalry between Montgomery and the American commanders as they competed to be the first into Germany.
09:40Over the next few days, there were more Allied crossings.
09:46German defences along the Rhine collapsed.
09:48In the north, Montgomery now pushed deeper into Germany, towards Munster.
10:03In the south, Bradley's forces, including Patton's Third Army, pushed east towards Marburg and Lauterbach.
10:10The major German city of Frankfurt am Main, was circled and bypassed.
10:27Die-hard German troops fought back ferociously.
10:30But by now, there was no question that the Germans were finished.
10:41The only issue was when they would realise it.
10:54As the Western Allies battled their way across West Germany,
10:57Stalin's Red Army in Poland prepared to launch a major offensive on Germany's eastern border.
11:08Hitler's forces in the region were poorly equipped and ill-prepared to repel an attack.
11:17Supplies of weapons had run so low, they were reduced to using First World War rifles.
11:23German intelligence estimated the Red Army's infantry outnumbered them 11 to 1.
11:34The Russians also had vastly more tanks and artillery.
11:41But the Germans had nothing left.
11:44Hitler's strategic reserve had already been used up on the Western Front.
11:49On January the 12th, 1945, the Russian offensive began with the usual artillery barrage.
12:06It stretched along a 300-mile front.
12:09A week later, the Red Army drove into the devastated remains of Warsaw.
12:32They then pushed westwards, towards the German border, 300 miles away.
12:38To the south, a second Soviet force took the Polish town of Krakow, on January the 18th.
12:49As the Soviet forces now raced westwards, on a broad front across Poland,
13:05they left behind pockets of German resistance in cities like Poznan and Breslau.
13:15These would later be mocked up.
13:19By the end of January, 1945, Soviet troops had crossed the German border and reached the river Oden.
13:33The Russians were now just an hour's drive east of Berlin.
13:37For the veteran Russian commander, Georgi Zhukov, it had been a triumph.
13:46He had travelled 300 miles in just 14 days.
13:51It was one of the fastest and longest blitzkrieg advances in military history.
13:55Zhukov's troops now paused to catch their breath and bring up supplies.
14:14They were soon joined by a second group of Soviet armies that dug in to their south on the river Nysa.
14:20Meanwhile, a third Russian force penned the remnants of the German armies in East Prussia
14:32into the Baltic port of Königsberg, Kaliningrad today.
14:37Hitler had appointed the SS chief, Heinrich Himmler, to command his forces in the neighbouring region.
14:51It was a sign of how deeply he had come to distrust his army generals.
14:57But Himmler had no military knowledge or experience.
15:00During February 1945, troops under Himmler's command were torn apart by Russian forces moving west.
15:22This time, Hitler could have set reserves.
15:25A large force of German troops still occupied the Kualan peninsula in neighbouring Latvia.
15:36But in another bizarre decision, Hitler refused to allow it to break out and provide assistance.
15:44He was still committed to holding on to land, his Lebensraum,
15:50however irrelevant or wasteful it might now be.
15:55It meant some 200,000 German troops spent the final months of the war doing nothing.
16:09The Red Army now prepared for its final assault on Berlin.
16:16It lay less than 50 miles away.
16:25In Germany, the imminent Soviet invasion caused mass panic among the civilian population.
16:37The Russians had seen first-hand the horrors perpetrated by the Germans in the Soviet Union.
16:43They'd witnessed whole towns and villages destroyed, their inhabitants massacred.
16:55They were now very clearly looking for revenge.
16:58There were horrific tales of Russian rape, murder, and pillage.
17:09In snow and bitter sub-zero temperatures,
17:13more than 5 million German civilians on the Eastern Front fled their homes and flooded west to seek refuge.
17:20Two million people were evacuated by sea from German-held ports along the Baltic coast.
17:29They were easy pickings for Soviet submarines.
17:37They were easy pickings for Soviet submarines.
17:3824 German passenger ships were torpedoed.
17:51They included the cruise liner, Wilhelm Gustloff, which had over 10,000 people on board.
18:04Barely a thousand survived.
18:07The worst loss of life ever in a single incident at sea.
18:11Hitler's acting chief of staff, General Heinz Guderian,
18:19now urged the Fuhrer to bring back any units that could be spared from the Western Front to defend Berlin.
18:26Hitler agreed and brought back the elite 6th SS Panzer Army.
18:32But he didn't send it to Berlin.
18:34He sent it to Hungary.
18:35He had become obsessed with defending Germany's last remaining source of oil,
18:43the Hungarian oil field west of Lake Balaton.
18:49It was an ill-considered decision.
19:00In Hungary, the panzers were hopelessly outnumbered by the Russians.
19:05To make matters worse, the weather conspired against them.
19:21A sudden thaw turned the ground into a sea of mud.
19:24For several days, the panzers struggled to hold back the advancing Russians.
19:39But they were steadily forced back into Austria.
19:49Soon they were drawn into the defense of Vienna,
19:52as the Red Army advanced towards the Austrian capital.
19:55But the 6th SS Panzer Army was a spent force.
20:03Its commander, SS General Sepp Dietrich, had no illusions.
20:08We call ourselves, he said, the 6th Panzer Army,
20:12because we have only six panzers left.
20:14On April the 10th, the Red Army swept them aside and took Vienna.
20:30As they did so, the question now became,
20:33who would be the first to reach Berlin?
20:35Would it be the Red Army or the Western Allies?
20:41The race for Berlin had become not just a military,
20:44but a political issue.
20:45By March 1945, the Red Army was lined up along the river Ode,
21:00awaiting a final assault on Berlin.
21:05It presented the Allied military command in the West with a dilemma.
21:09Berlin was less than 300 miles from their advanced positions.
21:17Most Allied commanders wanted to race to the city to beat the Russians.
21:24But at a conference a month earlier, in the Black Sea port of Yalta,
21:29the Allied leaders had divided up Germany into zones of influence.
21:35Berlin was firmly inside the Russian zone.
21:39So Eisenhower was instructed to tell his commanders to ignore Berlin
21:44and spread out to take the rest of the country.
21:55On April the 1st, US troops surrounded the German industrial cities in the Ruhr.
22:00German soldiers occupying the area put up a stiff resistance.
22:11German soldiers occupying the area put up a stiff resistance.
22:12When, two weeks later, the area fell,
22:28more than 325,000 troops were taken prisoner.
22:32It was one of the largest number of German prisoners taken in the war so far.
22:43The German commander, the die-hard Nazi field marshal Walter Mordel,
22:48committed suicide.
22:56Elsewhere in the country, resistance was more patchy
22:59and General Bradley's army stormed across Germany.
23:07By April the 18th, 1945,
23:10the US forces had punched a corridor through to the Czech border,
23:14splitting Germany in two.
23:27Meanwhile, north of the Ruhr,
23:28Montgomery's Canadian 1st Army began the liberation of Holland.
23:33The Dutch had suffered horrendously during the bitter winter of 1944-1945.
23:52The German occupying force had deliberately taken supplies of food and fuel
23:57from the country to use elsewhere.
23:59There had been widespread deaths from starvation and cold.
24:14The Dutch town of Arnhem
24:15was seized on April the 15th, 1945.
24:21Progress was rapid,
24:23and on the following day,
24:24the Canadians had liberated Groningen,
24:26close to the Dutch north coast.
24:29That left a German army virtually intact,
24:38but surrounded near Amsterdam.
24:50Soon afterwards,
24:52a ceasefire was negotiated.
24:53A ceasefire was negotiated.
24:53Allied aircraft now roared over the Dutch countryside,
25:04dropping food and medical supplies.
25:06At the same time,
25:18the British 2nd Army,
25:20also under Montgomery's command,
25:21pushed fast across the north German plain.
25:29Osnabrück fell on April the 4th.
25:32The British were soon at the German port of Bremen.
25:38Here, there was fierce German resistance.
25:48It took nine days of house-to-house fighting before the port was secured.
25:53Two days later,
25:59Montgomery's British forces reached the Elbe at Lauenburg.
26:08As the Allies advanced across Germany,
26:11they now came across horrific new evidence of the Nazis' final solution.
26:16In early April 1945,
26:20U.S. troops overran a concentration camp at Ordruf near Weimar in central Germany.
26:34A visibly shocked General Eisenhower paid a visit.
26:38The SS had evacuated most of the prisoners,
26:45but they had left behind piles of bodies.
26:53Eight days later,
26:54British troops overran another concentration camp at Belsen,
26:58north of Hanover.
27:02Here, they discovered over 70,000 prisoners.
27:08Thousands were already dead.
27:16The remainder were starving and disease-ridden.
27:24A radio broadcast by the BBC correspondent Richard Dimbleby
27:28gave the horrific details.
27:30I passed through the barrier
27:36and found myself in the world of a nightmare.
27:40The living lay with their heads against the corpses,
27:44and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession
27:47of emaciated, aimless people
27:49with nothing to do and no hope of life,
27:52unable to move out of your way,
27:55unable to look at the terrible sights around them.
27:57It was as though they were waiting their turn.
28:02This is what the Germans did.
28:05Let there be no mistake about it,
28:06did deliberately and slowly.
28:16Meanwhile, far to the south, in Italy,
28:19the German front was also starting to collapse.
28:22The German forces were dug in
28:26across the Apennine Mountains.
28:31Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander,
28:34the Allied commander in the Mediterranean,
28:36now launched a spring offensive.
28:40On April 9th, 1945,
28:43British troops attacked,
28:45pulling German forces in from along the front.
28:47Five days later,
28:55US troops also moved forward
28:57and swiftly reached the south bank of the river pole.
29:01The Germans retreated to the north bank.
29:08But Hitler's commander in Italy,
29:10General Heinrich von Wietinghoff,
29:12had no illusions that he could hold back
29:14the Allied advance for long.
29:19So he now made approaches to the Allies
29:21and on April 29th,
29:23surrendered unconditionally.
29:29It would take effect
29:30from May 2nd, 1945.
29:35This was the first formal surrender
29:37of German forces anywhere in Europe.
29:40The war was moving swiftly towards a conclusion.
29:56Back in Germany,
29:58American and Russian forces
29:59had by now met up on the Elbe near Leipzig.
30:03The moment the world has been awaiting so long,
30:06when a lie from west meets a lie from east,
30:08the meeting was achieved on April 26th,
30:11when a detachment of the American 69th Infantry Division,
30:14under Major General Reinhardt,
30:16was rode across the Elbe
30:17to the Russians assembled on the far bank.
30:24The stage was set
30:25for the final assault on Berlin.
30:29Hitler was desperate.
30:30He now turned to the old
30:32and very young
30:33for help in defending the city.
30:35His 1,000-year Reich
30:38was preparing for its final
30:40apocalyptic struggle to survive.
30:53On April 1st, 1945,
30:56Josef Stalin summoned his top commanders
30:58to Moscow
30:59to receive their orders
31:00for the capture of Berlin.
31:02Marshal Georgi Zhukov,
31:09Russia's most successful commander,
31:11would make the main assault
31:12from his bridgehead
31:13on the Oda River.
31:16A second group of Soviet armies,
31:19under Marshal Ivan Konev,
31:21would cross the river Nysa
31:22further south
31:23and push deep into Germany,
31:25bypassing the German capital.
31:27between them,
31:36they represented
31:37a massive Soviet force
31:38of over 2.5 million men.
31:41They were equipped
31:42with 6,000 tanks
31:44and self-propelled guns
31:45and 40,000 guns,
31:48mortars
31:48and rocket launchers.
31:53But the Germans
31:54were never going to make it easy.
31:55The city was defended
31:59by about a million troops.
32:04Many were dug
32:05into strong defensive positions,
32:07particularly along the Silo Heights,
32:10a steep escarpment
32:11rising out of the Oda Valley
32:12and slap in front
32:14of Zhukov's point of assault.
32:15The defenders
32:20were a mixed bunch
32:21of combat veterans,
32:23SS fanatics
32:24and inexperienced conscripts,
32:27some as young as 14,
32:29as well as elderly members
32:31of the Volkssturm
32:32or People's Army.
32:39By now,
32:40Hitler had retired
32:41to a bunker
32:41under the Reich's chancellery
32:43in Berlin.
32:46He was a heavily medicated
32:47and shambling figure
32:49who spent much
32:50of his time
32:51issuing increasingly
32:52unrealistic orders
32:53to largely imaginary armies.
32:59His public appearances
33:01were becoming
33:02ever more rare.
33:05But in early March,
33:07he was persuaded
33:07to visit some of the troops
33:09preparing to defend
33:10the Oda Line.
33:18Later,
33:19in the same month,
33:20he emerged
33:21to inspect a small group
33:22of Hitler youth soldiers.
33:28It was his last ever appearance
33:30before the cameras.
33:31then on April the 13th,
33:431945,
33:44the U.S. president,
33:45Franklin Roosevelt,
33:47died of a heart attack.
33:50He had been one
33:51of the architects
33:51of the war,
33:53responsible for throwing
33:54America's might
33:55behind the Allied offensive.
33:56The Nazi propaganda minister,
34:02Josef Goebbels,
34:03seized on the event
34:04to encourage
34:05his increasingly
34:06befuddled Führer
34:07to believe
34:07the Allied alliance
34:09would collapse.
34:10A German victory
34:12could still be snatched
34:13from the jaws of defeat.
34:14But any illusions
34:26were rapidly dispelled.
34:30Three days
34:31after Roosevelt's death,
34:33Zhukov began
34:34his assault on Berlin.
34:41He had one gun
34:43for every 13 feet
34:45of the front.
34:49But the German defense
34:50had anticipated it
34:51and pulled back
34:53to avoid the bombardment.
34:56As a result,
34:57when Zhukov's infantry
34:59advanced,
35:00they met
35:00unexpectedly heavy resistance.
35:13Desperate to retrieve
35:16the situation,
35:17Zhukov threw in his tanks.
35:22But they, too,
35:24were soon bogged down.
35:36Meanwhile,
35:37to the south,
35:38the assault
35:38by Konev's
35:39second group
35:40of armies
35:40had gone better.
35:43His troops
35:47had crossed
35:47the Neisser river
35:48and were well
35:49on their way
35:49to the next obstacle,
35:51the river Spree.
36:01Stalin stoked
36:02the rivalry
36:02between his two commanders
36:04by authorizing Konev
36:06to swing his tanks
36:07north towards Berlin.
36:08He was only too happy
36:12to see a race
36:13to take the city.
36:21After three days
36:22of savage fighting,
36:23Zhukov's troops
36:24managed to enter
36:25the eastern suburbs
36:26of Berlin.
36:30At the same time,
36:31Konev was approaching
36:32the city from the south.
36:33there was desperate
36:39German resistance.
36:48But on April the 25th,
36:50the Soviet armies
36:51met up
36:52and the final assault
36:53on Berlin began.
36:54as the fighting
37:13moved on
37:14from district
37:14to district,
37:16civilians began
37:17to emerge
37:17from the cellars.
37:19But the Russians
37:20took little notice
37:21of the flags of surrender.
37:28The rape of German women
37:30and girls
37:30was widespread.
37:36After three more days
37:38of fighting,
37:39the city's remaining
37:40defenders were pinned down
37:41in a narrow strip
37:42of central Berlin
37:43less than two miles wide.
37:51every street
37:57and house
37:57was contested.
38:04Then,
38:05on the morning
38:05of April the 30th,
38:07Soviet troops
38:08began an assault
38:08on the Reichstag,
38:10the German
38:10parliament building.
38:15Stalin regarded it
38:16as the symbol
38:17of Nazi power.
38:21they were stopped
38:27by heavy fire.
38:30So,
38:30they blasted
38:31the building
38:32at point-blank range
38:33with heavy artillery.
38:41That evening,
38:43the Russians
38:43stormed it.
38:51fighting raged
38:54from room to room
38:55and up and down
38:56corridors
38:57and staircases.
39:04It would take
39:05four hours
39:06before the red flag
39:07could be hoisted
39:08on one of the towers.
39:14The next morning,
39:16on May the 1st,
39:171945,
39:18the event
39:19was restaged
39:20for the cameras.
39:24But by then,
39:25Hitler
39:26was already dead.
39:29On April the 30th,
39:30as fighting
39:31raged overhead,
39:33the man
39:33whose insane ambitions
39:34had embroiled
39:35the world in war,
39:37laid waste a continent
39:38and led to the extermination
39:40of millions of Jews,
39:42took his own life.
39:43and the third,
39:44they wanted
39:45to compromise
39:47the only power
39:48and the only power
39:49in Germany.
39:56His long-time mistress,
40:00Eva Braun,
40:01who he'd married
40:02the day before,
40:03died with him.
40:04their partially burned bodies
40:11were buried
40:11in the Garden
40:12of the Reich's Chancellery.
40:20But the fighting continued.
40:21Hitler had appointed
40:32Grand Admiral
40:33Karl Dönitz
40:34his successor.
40:36And for the next few days,
40:37the new leadership
40:38attempted to salvage
40:39something from
40:40its nation's
40:41cataclysmic defeat.
40:42On May the 1st,
40:541945,
40:55the day after his death,
40:57German people
40:57were told
40:58that their Führer
40:59had fallen in battle.
41:01But they were told
41:02to continue the fight
41:04against the Bolshevik menace.
41:12But the German leadership
41:16was falling apart.
41:20In Berlin,
41:22Josef Goebbels
41:23and Martin Bormann
41:24tried to negotiate
41:25a city-wide ceasefire
41:27with the Russians.
41:30But the Russian commander,
41:32Marshal Zhukov,
41:33demanded unconditional surrender
41:35of all German forces
41:37everywhere.
41:40It was more than
41:41Goebbels and Bormann
41:42could deliver.
41:45Fighting in Berlin
41:46continued.
42:00Later that evening,
42:02Goebbels and his wife
42:03killed their six children
42:05and then committed
42:06suicide themselves.
42:07That same night,
42:12Bormann disappeared.
42:14Eventually,
42:15in the 1990s,
42:16DNA testing confirmed
42:18that a body found
42:18in Berlin
42:19was his.
42:29The next morning,
42:31Berlin surrendered.
42:34By mid-afternoon,
42:35all fighting in the city
42:36had stopped.
42:48Across the country,
42:49the pace of the German surrender
42:50now gathered momentum.
42:57The following day,
42:59Durnit sent a delegation
43:00to the British commanding officer,
43:02Field Marshal Montgomery.
43:03He offered to surrender
43:04all German forces
43:06in northern Germany.
43:15Montgomery sent a reply,
43:16saying he didn't have
43:17the authority
43:18to accept a surrender
43:19on behalf of the Americans
43:21or the Russians.
43:22He could only accept
43:23the surrender
43:23of those troops
43:24fighting him.
43:28Durnit's had no choice
43:30but to agree
43:30to Montgomery's terms.
43:36But that left Germany
43:37still fighting
43:38in the rest of the country.
43:48Durnit's now sent another delegation
43:50to General Eisenhower,
43:51the supreme Allied commander,
43:53to discuss a peace deal
43:55with the West.
43:56But it carefully avoided
43:57any reference
43:58to a surrender
43:59to the Russians.
44:04Eisenhower rebuffed him
44:06and insisted
44:07that only the unconditional surrender
44:09of all German forces
44:11was acceptable.
44:13Once again,
44:14Durnit's was forced
44:15to back down.
44:16At 2.41 in the morning
44:25of May 7, 1945,
44:28at Eisenhower's headquarters
44:29in France,
44:30General Alfred Jodl,
44:32Hitler's chief of operations
44:33throughout the six years of war,
44:36signed a document
44:37of unconditional surrender.
44:39Eisenhower's chief of staff,
44:49Walter Bedell Smith,
44:51signed for the Western Allies.
44:54General Ivan Susloporov
44:56signed for the Soviet Union.
45:05The only member
45:06of the Allies' side
45:07not happy
45:07with the arrangement
45:08was Stalin.
45:10The Soviet Union
45:11had suffered too much
45:12to miss out
45:13on its own humiliation
45:14of the Germans.
45:17So Stalin
45:18countermanded
45:19Susloporov
45:20and declared
45:21Russia would only
45:22accept a surrender
45:23in Berlin.
45:32It meant
45:32that the following day,
45:34Hitler's former
45:34chief of staff,
45:35Field Marshal
45:36Wilhelm Keitel,
45:37signed a second
45:38surrender document
45:39to satisfy Stalin.
45:48Marshal Zhukov
45:49signed for the Soviet Union
45:50with Air Chief Marshal
45:52Sir Arthur Teder
45:53signing on behalf
45:54of the Western Allies.
45:56In January 1943,
46:04the late President Roosevelt
46:08and Premier Churchill
46:09met in Casablanca.
46:12There,
46:12they pronounced
46:13the formula
46:13of unconditional surrender
46:15for the Axis powers.
46:17In Europe,
46:18that formula
46:19has now been fulfilled.
46:20across Europe
46:32and the United States
46:33crowds began to celebrate
46:35the end of the war
46:36in Europe.
46:37from now on,
46:48the day after
46:49the German surrender
46:50May the 8th
46:52would be known
46:52as VE Day
46:54victory in Europe.
46:56but as the celebrations
47:05continued,
47:07many were aware
47:07of two
47:08very sobering
47:09issues.
47:11In the east,
47:13Japan was still fighting.
47:14and in Europe,
47:24the continent
47:25lay in ruins
47:26and huge problems
47:27needed to be solved.
47:40Millions of Germany's
47:41concentration camp victims
47:43and slave laborers
47:44would need help
47:45to rebuild their lives.
47:55Millions of captured
47:57German fighting men
47:58had to be screened
47:59before being allowed
48:00to go home
48:01to identify
48:02and arrest
48:03major war criminals.
48:10The SS
48:12was a particular target.
48:14It had been responsible
48:18for some of the worst
48:19atrocities of the war.
48:28Leading Nazis like
48:30Herman Goering,
48:31head of Hitler's
48:32air force,
48:33were rounded up
48:33and paraded
48:34in front of the cameras.
48:35other top Nazis arrested
48:42included civilian leaders
48:43like Albert Speer
48:44and military leaders
48:46like Jodl and Dönitz.
48:48They would be put on trial
48:51in the German city of Nuremberg
48:53for crimes against humanity.
48:57You must plead guilty
48:59or not guilty.
49:03They kenne mich
49:04im Sinne der Anklage
49:05nicht trödig.
49:11Rudolf Hirsch,
49:13you must plead guilty
49:14or not guilty.
49:19Nein.
49:21That will be entered
49:22as a plea
49:23of not guilty.
49:27The Nazi leadership
49:28received sentences
49:29ranging from the death penalty
49:31to ten years in prison.
49:34Goering committed suicide
49:36before he could be hung.
49:46Two months
49:47after the German surrender,
49:49the Allies met
49:50in the Berlin suburb
49:51of Potsdam.
49:55Germany was divided
49:56into four zones
49:58of occupation.
49:59Soviet,
50:00British,
50:01American
50:02and French.
50:06Berlin,
50:07although deep
50:08in the Soviet zone,
50:09was parceled up
50:10between the Allies
50:11in the same way.
50:15The peoples of Europe
50:17would also find
50:18themselves divided.
50:19Some would now live
50:20under the control
50:21of the Western Allies,
50:23some under Communist Russia.
50:32But before any of this
50:34could be faced,
50:36there was still
50:37the war in the Pacific
50:38to be won.
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