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wwii end game s01e02 Episode 2 Engsub
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00:041944 in Europe the armies of the Grand Alliance finally had Germany within
00:09their grasp Britain and the Dominions American French and Dutch all have been
00:15tearing the guts out of the enemy's war potential in the West but for Hitler it
00:21wasn't over yet he prepared one last roll of the dice hoping to turn defeat
00:27into victory at stake was the future of Germany and all of Europe
00:41world war two was a conflict of immeasurable scale a total war laying waste
00:48to entire nations and changing the world forever from this devastation new powers
00:56would emerge allies would become enemies and an iron curtain would fall across
01:03Europe a fragile peace would be threatened by a new kind of conflict as two major
01:11superpowers bide the supremacy once again the world stood on the brink how did this
01:19come to pass how did the cold war emerge from the endgame of world war two
01:33by December 1944 six months on from D-day the Western allies had established a firm
01:41foothold in Western Europe I think in 1944 that the war develops very much the way Roosevelt hopes
01:48it's going to develop Germany is basically caught in a vice with Stalin's forces surging through Eastern
01:56Europe the Western and Soviet armies were now pushing the Germans back on two fronts but even
02:03as victory over Germany seemed within reach cracks in the Grand Alliance had begun to show
02:11a lack of trust had emerged even during the course of the war because as Stalin put it the United
02:18States and its
02:19allies for so long refused to open up a second front there was this argument for a long long time
02:26why didn't you put more forces into the Soviet Far East why didn't you help us more in our fight
02:32against the the
02:33fascists by the middle of December Dwight D Eisenhower had 48 divisions spread along Germany's Western
02:45Front in the previous few months the Allied push towards Germany had been increasingly arduous but their
02:55gains were significant for the German high command the situation was now desperate
03:03as a bitter cold and heavy snow set in Hitler prepared a secret and daring offensive
03:13Hitler was increasingly paranoid he believed he just needed a single victory on the Eastern Front a
03:19single victory on the Western Front and that would turn the tails he was almost intoxicated by the
03:24the Nazi blitzkrieg of 1940 41 desperate to replicate those sorts of successes
03:31the nature of warfare had changed by that point certainly the Allies had learned the business of
03:37warfare in fact they turned blitzkrieg on Nazi Germany Hitler's attempt to turn the tide his last roll of
03:45the dice would be code-named operation watch on the Rhine a surprise attack aimed at the weakest point in
03:53the Allied front Hitler envisaged a German breakthrough to capture the Channel ports and sever Allied supply lines the idea
04:04on the part of the German general staff was to try to split the Allied armies where they were and
04:09to make their way even to Antwerp which was the source of much of the material that the Allies were
04:17using against the Germans
04:21to catch the Allies off guard the Germans planned to attack through the heavily wooded difficult terrain of the Ardennes
04:28forest
04:35on December 16th 1944 the Germans launched their offensive
04:44attacking in bad weather to deprive the Allies of air support
04:55the assault came as an unwelcome surprise particularly for the Americans who thought that the Ardennes was a quiet sector
05:03a lot of the units there were either recuperating or had only just arrived from America so were green units
05:13nearly 1,000 tanks and over 200,000 German troops emerged from the forest and broke through the Allied lines
05:23German forces seized key crossroads and pushed forward in spearheads towards the Meuse River creating a bulge in the Western
05:32Front that would become the enduring name for this battle
05:39the early success of the offensive was briefly reminiscent of Germany's invasion of France through the Ardennes forest in 1940
05:50the Allies had been taken completely by surprise
05:57once the Americans had recovered from the shock they very quickly began mustering forces to cut off the bulge to
06:05relieve the vital town of Bastogne
06:10on December 17th members of US 101st Airborne were rushed into action to defend Bastogne
06:19if they could hold this crucial crossroads they could slow the German advance
06:26the American defenders were quickly encircled
06:34cut off from their rear bases and with dwindling supplies
06:38the Allied troops endured heavy assault by the surrounding Germans
06:42by December 24th German forces were within six kilometers of the Meuse River
06:49but here the offensive ground to a halt
06:55it was woefully misguided trying to push Panzer armies through mountainous wooded terrain
07:02winter conditions led to gasoline shortages
07:06a critical supply issue for the German advance
07:09the men and material that the German generals asked for said they would get a lot of it didn't arrive
07:19so that they were fighting with one hand behind their backs in some fashion
07:27the German forces also lacked crucial air support
07:31with no ability to monitor Allied movements from the air
07:36the Germans were essentially fighting blind
07:40they had absolutely no ability to see what was going on on the other side of the lines
07:47the Western allies had complete control of the air
07:50and the Germans couldn't look at what movements were being made
07:57on December 23rd the weather cleared
08:00the American and British air forces re-entered the fray
08:07as well as bombing German positions
08:09the Allied air forces were able to resupply the beleaguered garrison of Bastogne
08:16on the ground
08:18the tenacious American infantry had refused to surrender
08:22their defence of Bastogne was one of the most celebrated of the war
08:29they held the town long enough
08:31for Allied tanks and reinforcements
08:33to arrive and relieve them
08:35on December 26th
08:44and once that was done
08:46the German offensive rapidly ran out of steam
08:49the 50 mile gain which the Nazis had achieved
08:52is virtually wiped down
08:54the battle of the bulge is won
09:00I must say that the Germans fought it all at this point
09:04against the West was a miracle
09:06and shouldn't have been done
09:08it was utopian on their part
09:11and was simply not going to happen
09:13and chaos emerged from that
09:15it was both calculated and it was chaos
09:18several of Hitler's senior officers
09:21had expressed concern about the plan
09:23and they were proven right
09:26the Ardenn offensive would be Hitler's last high stakes gamble
09:31his relationship with the German high command
09:34was breaking down
09:40Hitler increasingly micromanaged the war
09:43Hitler became obsessed with moving units on maps that no longer existed
09:47and insisted on the Ardennes offensive
09:49against the advice of his generals
09:52by the beginning of 1945
09:55Germany's fate looked grim
09:58Hitler, unstable and paranoid
10:01refused to accept the reality of the situation
10:06after his failed offensive in the West
10:08German forces were in retreat
10:13while on the Eastern Front
10:15Stalin was readying his knockout blow
10:27through the latter half of 1944
10:30Soviet forces had been cutting a path through Eastern Europe
10:36by August the Red Army had liberated Belorussia
10:39over the next few months
10:41a series of Soviet thrusts
10:43into occupied Hungary and towards the Balkans
10:46pushed back the German front line
10:49the war's end game was underway
10:52after years of brutal fighting
10:54Stalin's final objective, Berlin
10:57was at last in sight
10:59Hitler's unsuccessful gamble for victory in the West
11:03had fatally weakened German forces in the East
11:06so it meant the bulk of Hitler's armoured forces were on the Western Front
11:11and not on the Eastern Front
11:12and that greatly helped the Russian race to the Oda
11:17On January 12th 1945
11:19Soviet forces launched the Vistula Oda Offensive
11:23which would bring them within striking distance of Berlin
11:29this is another very fast and furious campaign
11:35another deep operation style manoeuvre warfare
11:47the Soviets had spent six months gathering their forces for this campaign
11:52German intelligence indicated a huge Soviet force was amassing
11:57but Hitler refused to believe it
12:01this denial would ultimately prove to be a fatal error
12:07by the time Hitler allowed reinforcements to be sent to the region
12:12they were too late and too few to slow the Soviet advance
12:18on January 17th Soviet forces entered Warsaw
12:23they discovered a city in ruins
12:27following the failed resistance uprising in August 1944
12:32the Germans had systematically destroyed the Polish capital
12:36from Warsaw the Soviets continued their drive west
12:41they take most of Poland and isolate the remnants of Army Group Centre in the Königsberg region
12:51so at that point they have taken much of Poland
12:55by January 31st Soviet forces had reached the Oda River
13:00and were now less than 70 kilometres from Berlin
13:05for German forces defeat now seemed inevitable
13:15Nazi Germany was completely on the defensive
13:19its ability to conduct large-scale offensives had evaporated
13:23it had no way really of fending off attack whatsoever
13:27The thunder of the battle can now be heard on the very frontiers of the Reich
13:32Over three weeks of brutal fighting
13:34two hundred and ninety five thousand German soldiers had been killed
13:39and nearly one hundred and fifty thousand more captured
13:43so a lot of scores were being settled as well
13:45and it wasn't just about vengeance
13:47there was also a sense that here was a historic opportunity to change populations
13:52again in Czechoslovakia and in Poland and in Hungary
13:55there was mass expulsion of Germans
13:57millions of ethnic Germans in the region were displaced
14:01making the difficult trek west
14:03afraid to face the impending Soviet occupation
14:06and believing they would fare better in areas occupied by Western allies
14:11we're all talking in the large part about women and children
14:14who happened to be people who were from ethnic German backgrounds
14:17who spoke German and who had nothing to do with people who were fascists
14:21or who were sympathetic or who were Nazis
14:25In the areas that fell under Stalin's control
14:28it became clear that he was adopting a harsh, winner-takes-all approach
14:35You know, the allied political leaders were getting increasingly suspicious
14:39of Stalin and of his aims
14:42of some of the brutality that went on
14:45all of this kind of added to the sense that we're dealing
14:50not with a normal person on the other side of this alliance
14:54but with a monster of sorts
14:57Churchill said before the House of Commons
15:00I'll make a deal with the devil himself
15:02in order to defeat the Nazis
15:05and they understood, Churchill certainly understood
15:08what Stalin was about
15:12with all Soviet territory liberated from Nazi control
15:16Stalin now faced a new challenge
15:19how to motivate the ordinary Russian soldier
15:23to continue the fight into Germany
15:27You needed to somehow find a way to continue to motivate the troops to fight
15:33and they did that through relentless hate propaganda
15:37which revolved very much around what the Germans had done
15:41to civilian populations in the Soviet Union itself
15:45it revolved strongly around rape themes
15:48it revolved strongly around violence against children
15:52against women
15:53and then with the liberation of the extermination camps
15:58that also fed into that hate propaganda
16:03As the Soviet army advanced
16:05the Nazis sought to hide their crimes
16:09Concentration camps were emptied
16:11and inmates were forced to march west
16:14with little hope of survival
16:18The Germans march the remnants of inmates away
16:23in so-called death marches
16:24so there's a really gruesome final episode
16:27of the Holocaust playing itself out there
16:34In July 1944
16:36Soviet forces had been the first of the Allies
16:39to liberate a major concentration camp
16:41This was Majdanek
16:43near Lublin, Poland
16:47As the Soviets neared the camp
16:49the German authorities destroyed buildings
16:52in an attempt to hide the evidence of the camp's purpose
16:55but enough remained to reveal the atrocities that had been taking place there
17:00including the gas chambers
17:06On January 27th 1945
17:09as the Soviet forces moved through Poland
17:12they liberated what was left of Auschwitz
17:17the largest Nazi concentration camp complex
17:23When the Soviets arrived
17:25they found around 7,000 prisoners
17:27who had been left behind
17:29a tragically small number
17:31compared to the roughly 1.3 million people
17:35who were sent to the camp
17:36over the years that it was in operation
17:45As the Soviets continued on through Eastern Europe and the Balkans
17:50the fate of entire regions hung in the balance
17:56It was the Soviet Union that liberated most of Central and Eastern Europe
17:59almost all of it
18:01It was a very slow and painful kind of liberation
18:04it took a long time to this long slow march towards Berlin
18:12Civilians in areas liberated by Soviet troops
18:15greeted them with a mixture of relief
18:18and trepidation
18:21The Soviet liberation was a very complex liberation
18:24because on the one hand
18:25of course there was rejoicing
18:27and we've all seen the newsreels
18:28with the footage of soldiers being embraced and so on
18:31but at the same time
18:32the Red Army behaved in ways that also were notorious for
18:37I mean they were notorious for mass rapes
18:39for looting, for kind of random violence
18:42and also for destruction
18:51By the end of January Soviet forces had liberated large parts of Eastern Europe
18:59taking back regions that had spent most of the war under Nazi control
19:05They were now within reach of Germany itself
19:12In February 1945, fresh from this success
19:16Stalin travelled to Yalta in Crimea
19:19to meet once more with Roosevelt and Churchill
19:24The Western allies had achieved their own victory at the Battle of the Bulge
19:29But despite these shared successes
19:33tensions between the big three were now rising to the surface
19:39So by the time of the Yalta conference in February 1945
19:42Stalin essentially was holding all the cards
19:45The Red Army was well into the Balkans and Eastern Europe and in Poland
19:51so he didn't really have to make any concessions to the allies
19:57The Grand Alliance was beginning to fall apart
20:02The relationship really begins to fracture in early 1945
20:07and you might say the most famous meeting of that is
20:10it happens at the Yalta conference
20:12when for the first time Roosevelt and Stalin can't really paper over a difference
20:18The fate of Poland is so central to Stalin's view of what the future of the Soviet Union's security is
20:26like
20:26and on the other hand it's very important to Roosevelt
20:29and they can't really reach a solution
20:33It's always hard to separate out ideology from power politics
20:38the ideology of communism and anti-communism and power geopolitical interests
20:44reinforced each other and played into each other's hands
20:52On the issue of who should rule Poland, the allies were divided
20:57Britain and the US supported the London Poles, the Polish government in exile
21:04Stalin, however, supported the Polish Committee of National Liberation
21:09a rival group based in Lublin that was dominated by communists
21:16Churchill and Roosevelt would only agree to recognise the Lublin Committee as a provisional government
21:22and only if their membership was broadened to include all political parties
21:27and if free elections were held
21:30Stalin agreed to a democratic and free
21:33it's called free and unfettered elections in Poland
21:36which never happened
21:40In the end, the Soviets simply were able to establish
21:43to set up their own government in Poland
21:45a pro-Soviet government
21:46so there was a sense of betrayal on the part of the West
21:49And it's one of the reasons the Poles
21:52accurately, I think, say that the Western allies
21:55has sold Poland down the river to Stalin at Yalta
22:02The agreement over Poland at Yalta reveals that the relationship is going to have real trouble going forward
22:08It reveals a few things
22:10One, Stalin is going to do what he wants in Eastern Europe
22:13It also shows, by the way, that the limits of Roosevelt's power
22:17that Roosevelt was seen as very powerful at that point
22:20but he can't get his own way
22:23It's not a surprise that after this agreement
22:25he starts getting along very poorly with Stalin
22:28The Soviets are basically in control of Poland
22:34What do you do? How do you get them out of Poland?
22:37What if Roosevelt said, you know what, we're not going to accept Soviet domination of Poland?
22:42Well, then Stalin could have just said, sorry, but we're already in control
22:45so what do you do?
22:49At Yalta, Stalin made promises to Churchill and Roosevelt
22:53to have free elections, not only in Poland
22:56but also in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria
23:02In the aftermath of the war, these promises would be broken
23:08The Yalta Conference was not the first time Stalin had expressed his interest
23:13in expanding his sphere of influence in Europe
23:18There's the famous percentages agreement that Churchill and Stalin made in the fall of 1944
23:24where basically Eastern European countries were divided up
23:29in terms of who would be in charge
23:32And that meant that the Soviet Union was able to create a buffer zone
23:38that included Poland, included the Baltic states, included parts of Southern, Central and Eastern Europe
23:49Months before Yalta, on October 9th, 1944, Stalin and Churchill had met without Roosevelt
23:57Here they discussed plans to divide Poland and the Balkans between them, based on percentages
24:04The crucial thing about the percentages agreement is Roosevelt is not there
24:08It happens in one of the times when Churchill meets Stalin alone
24:12He goes to Moscow, and the two have this conversation about the post-war world
24:18At the Tehran Conference in 1943, Stalin had managed to divide the Western Allies, sidelining Churchill
24:30Now, it was Roosevelt who was left out in the cold
24:34The Americans were not told about this
24:37Churchill explains why
24:38At one point he says, if the Americans knew that we would be doing this, they would not be happy
24:46Churchill saw himself as a 19th century Stalin imperialist
24:50Stalin was very much a 19th century Stalin imperialist
24:53What did they do in the 19th century?
24:55They would divide spheres of influence, right?
24:58They would carve up countries
25:03At one point, and that's according to Churchill's memoir
25:07He has this table, hands it to Stalin, says, here, you know, I've created a little crude document
25:15Stalin makes a big checkmark, gives it back to Churchill
25:19Churchill has second thoughts and says something like
25:23You know, that's so cynical of us to divide, to decide the fates of nations in this kind of manner
25:30Maybe we should destroy this piece of paper
25:32And then Stalin says, no, you keep it
25:36Now, Churchill kept it
25:40Churchill and Stalin each had plans for Europe's future
25:44And each aimed to curtail the influence of the other
25:50But these plans were based on the assumption that the US would leave Europe at the end of the war
25:56Was that such a ridiculous idea?
25:58Well, not really, because this is what happened after the First World War
26:02So Stalin was simply drawn on historical precedent and expecting America to return to its post-war isolationism
26:07Nothing surprising there
26:09From the point of view of Churchill and Stalin
26:12When the war was over, they're going to be the two triumphant powers in Europe
26:17They're going to have the greatest military force in Europe
26:20And so they're the ones that are going to have to settle the European question
26:27And so in 1944, without consulting the United States, Churchill and Stalin negotiated a settlement for post-war Europe
26:40It does show that Stalin expected his sphere of influence to be recognized by the West
26:47In some ways, you know, they are openly trying to manipulate each other
26:51With Stalin and Churchill, there's no pretense about them being great friends
26:56Churchill had been a violent anti-communist for most of his career
27:00And Stalin had viewed Churchill as a typical British reactionary imperialist
27:06Despite their ideological differences, the British and Soviet leaders settled on a plan for post-war Europe
27:14That did not factor in American ambitions
27:17They were on the same page
27:19It's the Americans who had a different idea
27:22But Churchill and Stalin were on the same page
27:30By the time of the Yalta Conference in early 1945, victory in Europe was within reach
27:37And the Allies were intent on establishing a secure and lasting peace around the world
27:44But different regions meant different questions to answer
27:51It already was clear that Germany had lost
27:55They were on their last legs
27:57And so the question of post-war settlement in Europe and Asia became all the more urgent
28:05For Germany, decisions were made to divide the country into four zones
28:11The Allied powers, they agreed on how to divide Germany up into four occupation zones
28:21And Berlin was divided into four separate sectors
28:26Each Allied power was responsible for one sector
28:29But all four powers were to agree jointly on how to administer the city of Berlin
28:41The Allies were confident in their plans for post-war Europe
28:45But the theatre of war in Asia was another story
28:49And victory was far less certain
28:52Churchill and Roosevelt knew all too well that Japan would not surrender without a fight
29:00One thing that Roosevelt badly wanted at the Yalta was to make sure that Stalin would join the war against
29:06the Japanese
29:09And so the expectation on the Americans' part was that the Soviet Union would join the fighting against the Japanese
29:16Why did Roosevelt want that?
29:18The expectation was that the Soviet help would be needed somewhere in Manchuria, in China
29:23And the occupation of proper Japanese and the Heartland Islands
29:26So he wanted the Soviets to get involved
29:30But Stalin himself was also desperate to get involved in the war against Japan
29:38Having secured Soviet influence in the shape of post-war Europe
29:43Stalin was keen to now do the same in the East
29:49He wanted to improve the Soviet geopolitical position there by regaining the territories that the Soviet Union, or rather Tsarist
30:00Russia, had lost to Japan at the time of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905
30:09In the space of eight days, the Yalta Conference would change the face of nations around the world
30:18And for the big three, it would be their last encounter face-to-face
30:26Russelt's also much weaker at Yalta
30:28That he has noticeably deteriorated over the course of 1944
30:35So by 1945, he simply doesn't have the strength
30:39His system is really breaking down
30:46On April 12th, 1945, Franklin Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage
30:57All Washington said their last farewell to the man who had led them for so long, with such wisdom and
31:04so great a sympathy
31:06His death may have been sudden, but it followed years of poor health
31:13No wonder the American people showed emotion, for FDR had won their hearts
31:21His vice president, Harry S. Truman, was immediately sworn in as the new American president
31:28Inheriting the weighty task of seeing America through the final stage of the war and beyond
31:35Truman faced a steep learning curve
31:38As vice president, he had been deliberately kept in the dark by Roosevelt
31:43Roosevelt doesn't like Truman
31:45He chooses him to be his vice president in the summer of 1944
31:49Because he thinks Truman will help him get re-elected
31:52From that moment on, he hardly meets with Truman
31:54He doesn't tell Truman anything about his post-war plans
31:58Truman doesn't even know about the atom bomb
32:01The vice president of the United States has no idea that the United States has built in the atom bomb
32:07So, Roosevelt, who is dying, doesn't actually share with his vice president any of the secrets of the country
32:17By the time the Allies launched their major offensive against Berlin
32:21On April 20th, 1945, Truman had been president for eight days
32:27He entered office just in time to preside over the final stage of the war in Europe
32:36In Berlin, with no hope of victory
32:40Hitler turned on his own people
32:43Ordering complete destruction of German infrastructure
32:46And laying waste to anything that might fall into the Allies' hands
32:55At that point, for some people, what he is doing is choreographing defeat
32:59He feels humiliated by 1918
33:02He was a soldier in the German army
33:04He believed the German people, in a sense, threw in the towel
33:07In his mind, Germans behaved disgracefully and betrayed their own army
33:11So his view is, that will not happen
33:15Because I want everything blown up
33:18I want scorched earth
33:20I want all bridges, all trees, all farm fields basically destroyed
33:24I don't care about the future, because we must suffer and show in many ways this ultimate sacrifice
33:33As Hitler continued issuing orders to virtually non-existent units
33:38Stalin's forces, now massed along the Oder River, moved in for the kill
33:46By the point the Red Army had reached the Oder, it had been agreed that the Red Army would take
33:53Berlin
33:53It was nearest, there was no real point the British Army or the American Army trying to secure it
34:01The Americans and the Brits are advancing through Western Germany
34:05Their advance is accelerating now
34:07So there is a sense by Stalin that they might want to take Berlin
34:12And he really wants to have Berlin
34:14He wants to have that prize
34:19In a bid to push his forces ahead of the Western Allies, Stalin pitted his generals against each other
34:26Marshal Zhukov originally had been tasked with taking the city
34:29But he also told Marshal Konev to the south that if he got there first, the honour would fall to
34:35him
34:36And that's one of the reasons why there are so many casualties in that battle
34:43They become bigger just because Stalin pushes the generals to go and to race each other
34:53The fate of Berlin would ultimately be determined by US General Eisenhower
34:59In late March 1945, he telegrammed Stalin stating that Berlin was no longer the objective of the Western Allies
35:08He planned to halt his forces on the Western Front at the Elbe River
35:13The reality was that the Allies had decided that casualties would not warrant them taking a city that had been
35:19agreed that the Soviets would take in the first place
35:22To Eisenhower, Berlin was merely a symbolic prize
35:27But Stalin saw the strategic value in conquering the German capital
35:37On the Western Front, the Allies had reached the Elbe River five days earlier and stopped
35:44They waited here, less than 100 kilometres from Berlin
35:49Leaving the way open for the Soviets to take the city
35:56On April 16th, Soviet forces on the river Oda surged forward
36:02Almost a million men assaulted the German lines
36:06The final battle for Berlin had begun
36:16The Germans simply did not have the ability to defend Berlin effectively
36:21Its armies to the north and south were exhausted
36:25The Berlin garrison itself had been depleted to defend the Silau Heights
36:30The Soviets had commenced their attack on the 16th of April
36:36By April 20th, Soviet armies had encircled Berlin
36:41From there, they also reached out and connected with the American forces waiting at the Elbe River
36:47The German forces had nowhere to run
36:52There's a ground battle outside of Berlin
36:55Which is part of a larger battle for the entire region
36:59That is the most destructive part of it
37:02Those trapped in Berlin were pummeled from the land and the air
37:08They endured days of artillery fire
37:11Nearly two million shells were dropped on the city in this final assault
37:15It would be the most intense barrage of the war
37:19Stalin's assault on Berlin was absolutely enormous
37:22He'd massed around two and a half million troops
37:26A million of whom were going to assault the city directly
37:28The other armies doing this massive enveloping movement to cut the city off
37:34The Germans had nothing like that in the way of manpower or equipment
37:42In the ruins of Berlin, German and Soviet soldiers paid a heavy price for their leader's ambitions
37:51Stalin called for total victory at any cost
37:54While Hitler refused to surrender
38:03Now in Hitler's mind, he imagined that the two German armies to the south of the city would come to
38:09the rescue
38:09And Hitler instructed them to march on the city and save it from the assault
38:14This was complete nonsense, neither of the armies have the ability to do that
38:20But spurred on by Hitler, the people of Berlin mounted a desperate, hopeless defence
38:27Many of those who were left to defend Berlin were old men and boys
38:33One battalion of Hitler youth sent into battle had an average age of 14 years old
38:44In the final days of the war, much of the German army preferred surrender to the Western Allies
38:51Fearing Soviet vengeance for the brutal treatment of Russian prisoners and civilians
39:01Without hope, Hitler had retreated deep within his bunker
39:04On April 30th, he committed suicide
39:11With this, the German command in Berlin were finally prepared to surrender
39:21When the fighting in Berlin was at an end
39:24Around 80,000 Soviet soldiers lay dead
39:31The number of German deaths would never be known
39:40On May 7th, 1945, the Germans surrendered unconditionally to the Western Allies
39:47Taking effect on the 8th of May
39:52But Stalin wasn't satisfied with this
39:58He staged a second ceremony in Berlin
40:01This time, the Nazis surrendered to the Soviet Union
40:05At one minute past midnight on May 9th, 1945
40:13Stalin's victory over Nazi Germany was complete
40:17He is the strategist, he is the grand strategist at this point
40:21And he seems to be basically trying to have as strong a position in Central Europe as he possibly can
40:30He's trying to secure a central position in Germany as possible
40:34I mean, he knows he's got Eastern Europe
40:36The Eastern Europe he's conquered and he's taken over
40:38So it's more a case, I think, of making sure that the Soviet Union has this powerful position
40:47Despite the surrender of the Nazi high command
40:50Europe was in a state of chaos
40:55I think part of the problem is
40:57We grow up thinking of wars as having started on a certain date and stopped on a certain date
41:01And in fact, it's much messier than that
41:04So although officially the 8th of May, or in the Eastern Bloc, the 9th of May
41:08Is supposed to be V Europe Day
41:10So there were still people who hadn't had the news
41:12Who were still randomly killing each other
41:14There was the beginning of rounding up and randomly killing people who spoke German
41:17Which was, again, an atrocity that was happening in plain sight
41:21It was very ugly and very messy
41:25With the war in Europe over, the role of the various allied states was unclear
41:32It's a easily clear cut who is the dominant or not dominant military leader
41:38In material terms, nothing comes close to the United States
41:41On the other hand, what the Americans don't have is any, in 1945, political cohesion about their future
41:47Do they want to stay in Europe? That's still not decided
41:49Whereas, in some ways, the saddest is Churchill
41:52Because he does have a political future, he's trying to maintain the British Empire
41:56But on the other hand, his military is not nearly as powerful as the United States
42:02And it's also not shaped the right way to fight the Soviet Union
42:06Churchill was under no illusions about Stalin
42:09I mean, we know that there were plans abroad in the summer of 1945
42:14Even after victory
42:16For a potential attack against the Soviet Union on the part of the British troops
42:23In the final months of the war, Churchill's concerns about the influence of the Soviet Union had grown
42:30He began to consider a bold new strategy to deal with this threat
42:35In May 1945, he instructed the British Chiefs of Staff
42:40To conduct a feasibility study for a military operation
42:44Which very appropriately was dubbed Operation Unthinkable
42:48To drive the Red Army out of Germany and out of Poland
42:51He did this without consulting the Americans
42:54And really, to be fair to him, was just contingency planning
42:58It's quite clear that the British General Staff was ordered to make these potential plans
43:06Didn't really want to, and didn't really think they could potentially work
43:10The plans for Operation Unthinkable would never be finished
43:14On July 5th, 1945, an election in Britain saw Winston Churchill's wartime conservative government ousted
43:23In favour of Clement Attlee and the left-leaning Labour Party
43:29The incoming Labour Party had no desire for a war against the Soviets
43:36Of the original Big Three, only Stalin remained
43:41The next time the Great Powers met, both the British and US leaders were new to their role
43:55As they began their negotiations for the future of Europe
44:00The rivalry between the Great Powers entered a new phase
44:04The Race for Technological Supremacy
44:09The war had driven the development of new weapons
44:12And spurred scientific breakthroughs of all kinds
44:19These would have a lasting impact, not only on the dynamics of the Grand Alliance, but on the entire world
44:27For Stalin, victory in Berlin was more than just symbolic
44:31Control over Berlin gave the Soviet Union an advantage in the race to recruit German scientists and engineers
44:40There was this, at the end of the war, very quickly a jostling for nuclear scientists, rocket scientists, jet engine
44:48scientists
44:49Anything that would give either side a technological advantage
44:53And of course, for German scientists, it depended on which side of the occupied zones you were in as to
44:58where you would end up
45:04The Western Allies worked together to search occupied Germany for scientists and their research material
45:12At Bonn University, they uncovered the Ozenberg list
45:16It detailed scientists and engineers put to work for the Third Reich
45:22In July 1945, the United States began covertly recruiting as many German scientists as possible
45:30As part of a policy codenamed Operation Paperclip
45:37The United States exported, if you can call it that, about 1,000, between 1,400 scientists and their families
45:46to the United States
45:48We only know about the most famous ones, including Bernhard von Braun
45:54Von Braun was a former Nazi Party member and SS officer
45:58And the head of the Nazi V2 missile program
46:02His weapons program used concentration camp inmates in the production of V2 missiles
46:10This program of forced labor was responsible for the deaths of at least 10,000 prisoners
46:17Information that was classified by the US Army
46:27Incriminating evidence against these scientists was destroyed by US intelligence agencies
46:34Paving the way for them to be brought to the US
46:40They also used incentives and it didn't matter whether these scientists had been part of the Nazi Party
46:46It was very important for them to get their hands on the scientific knowledge that these Germans had
46:53The Americans were not alone in their recruitment efforts
46:59In 1946, the Soviet Union had also established their own version of Paperclip
47:06Operation Osoviahin
47:08Under this program, they recruited German scientists from across the Soviet-controlled zone
47:14Who then proceeded to incentivize them to move to the Soviet Union, which many did
47:22In one night, in October 1946, the Soviet Union forcibly deported and recruited over 2,000 German scientists
47:32Some of them under duress, some of them because of a promise of good housing, better food situation
47:38And also a better living standard for their family than what they would expect in Germany
47:47This helped to quash any objections in the US over bringing German scientists into the country
47:54The looming threat that their expertise may instead fall into Soviet hands was too great to ignore
48:04But as the gathering of Europe's top scientists began
48:11The war in the Pacific ground on
48:13On that battleground, the fate of nations would be decided by a new brand of weapon
48:23The end of the war in Europe was only the beginning of a new era of chaos and uncertainty
48:30Displacement is completely ubiquitous
48:33It's nearly the normal state to be displaced in some way, shape or form
48:39The top priorities were to get Europe up and running again as a viable economic entity
48:45But also to be able to address the immense human tragedy that was going on at the time
48:51There were so many refugees across Europe
48:54People without papers, people without homes, people who had lost their families
48:58It really was necessary to stabilize society and really get the whole continent up and running again
49:06But the grand relationship between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies was crumbling
49:12And mistrust was growing
49:16In the summer of 1945, the endgame of World War II would reach its devastating conclusion
49:58For a few years, it was more difficult for them to escape from the country
49:58Who could live safely?
49:58The Holocaust of the World War II
49:59The Revolution of the World War II
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