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00:00Oh
00:30The
00:33War in Europe is entering its last desperate months the soldiers and civilians of continental Europe can see the end in sight
00:43Strategists search for solutions that can end the fighting and end the dying
00:48Desperate strategies and tactics are deployed by Germany and Japan in the fantastic
00:53Hope that somehow the war could be turned around and in some way victory
00:59Even a compromise peace could be snatched from the hands of the Allied enemy whose war aim is the total defeat of the axis
01:08The long-awaited invasion of France has taken place with Operation Overlord in June 1944
01:15Armies have fought bitter battles
01:18French cities often destroyed to be liberated
01:22After a struggle of weeks where the Germans had pinned the Allies into Normandy the American British
01:29Canadian and free French forces broke out and caused the Nazi forces to flee almost to the borders of Germany
01:36In the optimism these victories created there was an impetus to end the war quickly before Christmas
01:44The ambition led Allied generals to abandon the patient preparations that had characterized Overlord
01:51And made a bold thrust to cross the Rhine and invade Germany
01:56This resulted in the Arnhem Airborne attack the bridge too far
02:01It resulted in defeat for the Allies the result was the war's prolongation
02:13In the east the Russian army has rolled back the Germans to the edge of Germany
02:18The Red Army is now a tool not of the defense of Russia its goal
02:23Not the defeat of Nazism, but the instrument of Stalin's post-war ambitions
02:30In the Pacific
02:32Island after island had been subject to invasion and conquest as the grip of American forces grows ever tighter and
02:40Japan despite fanatical resistance faces utter defeat
02:48In
02:59Italy the fighting continued
03:01Following the capture of Rome the Germans had established another defensive line across the Italian Peninsula
03:08Which once again had to be broken by frontal assault?
03:12The German line of defenses was known as the Gothic line and
03:16Stretched across the central Apennine mountains as they turned across the width of Italy
03:22An ancient Roman road running to the rear of the fortifications
03:26Enabled the Germans to move reserves and resources from point to point to deal with any Allied attack
03:33The Germans actually outnumbered the Allies in this theater of war the balance only evened by Allied
03:40superiority in airpower and supplies
03:44The fighting in France had assumed prime place in Allied plans and
03:49Troops were withdrawn from Italy to land in southern France and attack Germany directly
03:58The American command had always regarded the Italian campaign as a
04:02Distracting sideshow that diverted the Alliance from the main task of defeating Nazism in its home
04:09The Americans viewed with suspicion
04:12Grand British plans to sweep up the leg of Italy and then on to Vienna coming at the Reich via the back door
04:21the US saw
04:22Imperial Britain at work looking to the post-war world and aiming to become the predominant Mediterranean power
04:29The
04:34British were to be frustrated in this ambition and were forced to concede that there could be no grand attack in Italy
04:41Rather a series of assaults that would pin down German forces weakening the overall Nazi strategic position
04:52The Italian countryside was easily defended the central mountainous spine prevented maneuver
04:58shrinking the fighting onto narrow fronts as
05:04The Allies pushed further north they encountered large rivers such as the Po flowing west to east
05:10Which were to form yet another set of formidable natural barriers?
05:16The autumn and winter were wet and turned the earth into a gluttonous morass
05:21making even the tiniest movement a
05:24supreme effort
05:28This was a war fought in the landscape of the Renaissance painting and
05:33It was a terrain where the Renaissance army of men on foot and horse was more at home than a mechanized mid-20th century
05:41force
05:42Steep mountains and hills were surmounted by still usefully fortified towns
05:47Countless narrow valleys were cut by stream and river
05:51every few kilometers a bridge
05:54Demolished by retreating Germans would have to be rebuilt under the gun sights of the enemy
06:02The Italian fighting of that winter has been described as an engineer's war
06:07It was they who rebuilt the bridges disarmed the bombs and booby traps
06:11It was they who bulldozed ways through narrow streets of towns and villages which had been systematically demolished
06:20In
06:22The winter the war became bogged down and both sides drew back to await the dry weather
06:29For veterans of the 8th army who were fighting perhaps their fourth year of war
06:34Old soldiers who knew a sideshow when they saw it the stalemate was relief
06:44In
06:451939 as the war began
06:47Optimism was everywhere the British people and army sang a popular song which predicted that they would
06:54Hang out the washing on the Siegfried line
06:57The Siegfried line
07:13The Siegfried line named after a hero of Wagnerian Germanic legend was a line of powerful
07:19fortifications along Germany's western border which ran for more than
07:24450 kilometers and stood opposite the French Maginot line
07:29while standing in opposition to the French defenses the German line was more lightly built a series of infantry pillboxes and
07:37Anti-tank barriers it was not designed to be impregnable rather to slow any attacker
07:43Whilst a mobile reserve was brought to bear against the would-be invader
07:48Light as the Siegfried line was when built in the 1930s
07:52It still consumed a third of Germany's annual production of building materials and the labor of more than half a million men
08:01Although
08:14Lightweight the Siegfried line did deter the French during the phony war and in
08:191940 the British army never hung anything on the Siegfried line
08:24Leaving most of its clothes behind at Dunkirk
08:28During the long years of occupation and Nazi dominance
08:32The line was the border with a placid occupied territory and was neglected
08:40As
08:42the Western Allies drew near the Siegfried line became known as the West Wall and
08:48became a battleground as
08:51The autumn of 1944 had turned to winter the advance of the Allies slowed
08:57Their failure to secure Antwerp and use the port created a crisis of supply
09:03Simply not enough fuel ammunition and food were reaching the Allied armies
09:08Hitler became convinced that the Western Allies had overreached and exposed themselves to a devastating counter-attack
09:17on December 16th that attack began
09:21The
09:25German forces had made a great effort to trawl through the population and find as many fresh troops as possible by December
09:341944 another
09:36150,000 soldiers had been scraped together and had been added to the German army
09:41German industry had made a tremendous last effort and had produced the material the tanks the fuel and the ammunition
09:48for a last great offensive
09:51Hitler ambitiously planned to repeat his triumph of 1940
09:56Panzer armies would thrust through the forests of the Ardennes
10:00Then swing around to the rear of the British and Americans
10:03Then take Antwerp and the balance of power in the West would swing back to the Nazis
10:10The attack would be made in the deep winter when weather would ground the Allied Air Forces
10:15The two weapons would complete the victory with a devastation of London an
10:21officer who was given command of one of the Panzer armies said
10:24All Hitler wants me to do is cross a river
10:28Capture Brussels take Antwerp through the Ardennes when the snow is waist-deep
10:33When it doesn't get light till 8 and it's dark at 4 with divisions of kids and old men. Oh
10:40and at Christmas too
10:45The
10:47Attack fell on weaker u.s. Units and showed as a great indentation in the line separating the two armies
10:54The offensive became known as the Battle of the Bulge
10:58The Germans swept into Belgium capturing many thousands of prisoners
11:03yet, they underestimated the Americans who reorganized and reinforced slowing the German attack on
11:11December 22nd the weather lifted and Allied airpower began to slowly destroy the Bulge all
11:19Through January the US Army slowly closed around the Germans
11:26The Bulge offensive squandered the very last strength available to the Nazis
11:31Winter closed around the armies and prevented any more fighting
11:36Hitler's
11:38Decision to attack in the Ardennes to spend his last strength in the West rather than turn against the Red Army in the east
11:46Seems with a certain clarity of hindsight to be one of the German dictators greatest mistakes
11:53In the West the Germans enjoyed many advantages
11:56natural defenses the great rivers of Western Europe and the extensive line of
12:02Fortifications such as the West Wall the Siegfried line
12:06There was to be no such advantage in the east
12:09The strategic reality was that attacking in the West gave Hitler a slim chance of victory
12:15Whereas attack in the east would only serve to postpone the inevitable defeat
12:23The failure of offensive in the Ardennes made the final task of the Red Army easier yet as the
12:30Communist army prepared for that final offensive the Soviet high command was presented with difficult strategic choices
12:38The Soviets had begun the war out of desperate self-defense
12:42Against the 1941 German invasion they had not embarked upon a war of conquest
12:48Now though events had conspired to present a tantalizing prize of expansion to the communists
12:55The decision was not how to defeat Germany, but how to make best use of the peace
13:03The Russians enjoyed a simple and large numerical advantage that enabled them always to have a strategic reserve
13:12Always to have something held back with which to hit the Nazis
13:25An
13:27Exception to the domination of Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union is in Yugoslavia a country where communist partisans
13:32An
13:50Exception to the domination of Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union is in Yugoslavia a country where communist partisans
13:57Under Joseph Tito are about to liberate their country from the German occupiers without the help of any foreign army
14:05This will make Yugoslavia
14:07unique in the post-war world
14:15In the winter of 1944 two very similar military forces faced very different fates
14:22The British Home Guard was disbanded in December 1944
14:27formed in the spring of
14:291940 as a Nazi invasion seemed imminent the force performed a multitude of the simplest military tasks and
14:36If nothing else it allowed the regular army to concentrate on training and equipping new recruits
14:43The Home Guard kept vigil on airfields and factories it manned roadblocks and captured downed Luftwaffe pilots
14:51Originally composed mostly of men too old and those few too young for military service
14:57the reality of the Home Guard was different to any television comedy as
15:03Britain's position became more secure and the threat of invasion became more remote the Home Guard was
15:09Integrated into the regular army and attached to regular units
15:14Membership once voluntary became compulsory and the Home Guard became preschool for military service
15:21Devoted to preparing young men of 17 and 18 for their eventual conscription
15:28There came to be as many as three-quarters of a million Home Guards
15:33Far from being a dad's army the average Home Guardsman was under 30 years of age
15:39The Home Guard was for many a pleasant wartime hobby
15:43Some members actually resenting any compulsory service such as when Home Guards were ordered to man anti-aircraft artillery
15:54As the Home Guard marched before their king through the streets of London the British amateur soldiers
16:01Ended their service never having faced the ultimate test by having to meet their country's enemy in battle
16:14The
16:16German Volkssturm mobilized as the British disbanded all German men between 16 and 60 were drafted into service
16:25For the German Home Guard the experience was not one of increasing routine and organization
16:30Rather it was of descent into anarchic chaos against the invaders with supplies becoming more scarce
16:38It was a force not organized by the traditional German army, but by the Nazi Party
16:44Towards the end of the war the SS was rounding up civilians and driving them at gunpoint to fight the invaders
16:51It was no hobby as the elderly and children went out with handheld rocket launchers to face elite Allied soldiers
16:59If
17:05Any in the Allied nations doubted what all the fighting was for whether all the deaths were in vain
17:11In the last months of fighting in Europe as Allied soldiers entered the territory of the Third Reich
17:18Conclusive and devastating proof of the evil of Nazism was found as the death and concentration camps were uncovered
17:26Nazism in its genesis had been anti-semitic to its very core
17:32Jews were blamed for all of Germany's misfortunes
17:36Blamed for the First World War
17:38Blamed for any ill that befell Germanic peoples
17:51It was always dangerous to be Jewish in the Nazi state
17:55But the violence had been arbitrary the product of street gangs and unsympathetic law enforcement
18:02but with the conquest of Poland a policy of gathering the Jewish population into ghettos and then
18:09Effectively starving the Jewish population in those ghettos was implemented
18:15Following the invasion of Russia
18:17special SS death squads were ordered to follow behind the armies and
18:22Ethnically cleanse the countryside of Jews by mass shootings
18:26history cannot hide the fact that
18:29Ukrainians ethnic Romanians in southern Russia and Lithuanians were only too happy to assist the Nazis in their evil work
18:38the work of these death squads horrified many ordinary German soldiers who witnessed the killings as
18:45bystanders
18:47The final solution was then introduced
18:50The systematic industrialized murder of all Jews was carried out in secret and in remote places
18:58Victims would be deported to camps far from home under the guise of resettlement
19:03The
19:16Final solution was not a monolithic single historical event
19:21Some camps Treblinka Chilemo and Sabibor where death camps for the purpose of mass murder alone
19:29At
19:32The camp with the greatest notoriety
19:35Auschwitz-Birkenau
19:37Extermination was combined with slave labor
19:40The children the sick and the aged were killed on arrival by gassing
19:46the able-bodied were tattooed and
19:49Assigned to be worked to death
19:52The
19:57Soviet forces in the east
19:59Encountered the horrors of the death camps largely after they had been abandoned in the face of the Red Army's advance
20:07Many of the horrific images that have come down to us are the comparatively less brutal slave labor camps such as Belsen and Dachau
20:16Established before the final solution was devised
20:20These places were found by the Western armies
20:23The inhabitants of these camps were often deportees from the eastern camps
20:31The images of such infernal brutality speak for themselves
20:36Six million Jews were to die
21:20I
21:36Have been here eight days and never in my life have I seen such damnable ghastliness
21:42This morning we buried over 5,000 bodies. We don't know who they are
21:46Behind me you can see a pit which will contain another 5,000. There are two others like it in preparation
21:54We actually know now
21:56What has been going on in these camps? I know personally what I am fighting for
22:15You
22:37The war had begun with Germany's Air Force the most feared and effective in the world
22:44The last year of fighting was to see the utter prostration of the Luftwaffe
22:49As the bombers of the RAF and US Army Air Force pounded the cities of Germany to rubble
22:55long-range fighters
22:57systematically shot down the Luftwaffe fighter force
23:01By 1945 the Allied Air Forces had come to enjoy what is now called air supremacy
23:07Allied planes were free from the threat of German fighters and were able to attack any target at any time
23:15anywhere in Germany
23:19The result was an oil famine as every oil refinery and synthetic oil factory were destroyed
23:25The remaining tanks and vehicles ground to a halt
23:29The
23:31German transport system was utterly destroyed
23:35Hardly a train or individual truck was able to move the shortest distance without inviting destruction from the air
23:45Above all the consequence of air supremacy was the terrible methodical demolition of Germany's cities
23:52killing thousands and
23:54creating a multitude of homeless
23:56in February
23:581945 one of the most controversial raids of the strategic bombing campaign was made on Dresden
24:05800 British Lancasters and
24:08300 American flying fortresses attacked the East German city until then untouched by the war
24:16Dresden was not a center of industry. It was a city famed for architectural beauty
24:22Dresden was crammed with civilians fleeing the Russians
24:2650,000 were killed in one night as the bombers raised a firestorm in the city
24:34Dresden produced a shockwave of doubt among the Allies even Churchill doubted the rightness of the raid
24:42The debate on the morality and effectiveness of the air war will last forever
24:47The fact remains though that the war in Europe was shortened by the attacks
24:56The war brought forward many new technologies the air war was no different in January
25:031945 just as the Allies had all but driven the German fighters from the skies
25:08The Luftwaffe deployed a new aircraft the first operational jet fighter the me 262
25:17The tremendous speed of the new plane made the 262 invulnerable
25:21Yet it was a weapon that arrived too late and in too few numbers to save the Reich
25:37As Allied armies were fighting on the borders of Germany the United States Army Air Force
25:43Unleashed a campaign of heavy unrestricted area bombing on the cities of Japan
25:49Bases built on captured islands were used to launch mass attacks by giant
25:55B-29 bombers that aimed to pulverize the Japanese islands
26:00The decision was taken to attack the wooden cities with incendiary bombs
26:06echoing the methods of the RAF in Germany and
26:09Abandoning the usual American tactic of precision attacks on industrial and military targets
26:16on February 25th
26:18150 B-29s made a huge attack on the Japanese capital and burnt away two and a half square kilometers of Tokyo
26:27The US Air Force then altered the role of the B-29 to make the attacks even more devastating
26:35The heavily armed B-29 was designed to fly at high altitude
26:40It was now to fly at low level and at night and was stripped of its defensive gunners
26:47Less fuel was needed and so the plane could carry even more bombs
26:52in early March
26:54300 B-29s attacked Tokyo and raised a firestorm
26:58The giant fire destroyed a quarter of the city and killed
27:0485,000 civilians
27:06in the coming month
27:07every major Japanese city was attacked and destroyed by planes using these tactics
27:13A month later and the B-29s began to systematically destroy the lesser industrial cities
27:20In
27:31The southern Pacific the long fight for the liberation of the Philippine islands from Japanese domination continued
27:39US General MacArthur a man for whom the islands had been a second home had vowed to return to liberate the territory
27:47Although a landing had been made in October 1944
27:51US forces were embroiled in a long fight through the large islands and the scattered archipelagos of islands
27:58The Japanese forced their enemy to fight for every meter of territory on the road to the Philippines capital Manila
28:08It was another battle where a town had to be virtually destroyed to be freed from occupation
28:16In February 16,000 Japanese and nearly 100,000 Filipino civilians died
28:25The Philippines had been part of the grand Japanese scheme to liberate Asia from European domination
28:33Many Filipinos were proud of their westernized attitude
28:37The islands harbored the only serious organized resistance movement against the Japanese
28:43Partisans who aided the American forces in fighting their occupiers as
28:48The Japanese were pushed to the remote areas of the islands
28:52MacArthur was to show a style of leadership that was to characterize his role in the post-war world
28:58He embraced and forgave those Filipinos who had collaborated with the Japanese
29:04Seeing a stability based on forgive and forget as the best future for the liberated territory
29:13In
29:15February 1945
29:17Perhaps the most famous land battle of the Pacific War was fought as yet another
29:23Amphibious attack was mounted by the US Navy. They attacked the island of Iwo Jima
29:29Iwo Jima was one more stepping stone on the path towards invasion of Japan a base
29:35From which attacks could bring the war home to the people of Japan
29:39The island was part of a volcanic archipelago its name translates to sulfur island
29:46The volcanic geology made trenches and dugouts in which soldiers took cover too hot to endure
29:53It was earth from which issued poisonous volcanic gases
29:58it was a landscape of razor-edged ridges deep ravines and natural caves a
30:04Natural fortress unto which the Japanese defenders had piled layer upon layer of concrete and steel fortification
30:13The conflict followed the same grim script which had directed the fighting on other islands
30:19With each island as the fighting grew ever nearer to Japan the determination of the defenders reached new levels of passion
30:28More than
30:31110,000 US Marines were resisted by just
30:3522,000 Japanese
30:37The Japanese did not oppose the landing. They allowed the massive naval bombardment to fall on empty defenses
30:45they allowed the American forces to land and then
30:49Engage the invaders at close quarter with hand-to-hand fighting where weight of bombardment and air power were
30:56neutralized and
30:57Individual fighting spirit would give the advantage
31:02The battle was fought meter by meter the Japanese made a last stand in a narrow rocky gorge
31:09Little more than half a kilometer in length
31:12It took US forces 10 days of constant combat to defeat the defenders who had to be killed
31:19man by man a
31:22Third of the Marines became casualties and the battle passed into legend
31:27The image of Marines raising the stars and stripes on Iwo Jima
31:32Became an American icon of victory
31:35In
31:48February 1945 the leaders of the Allies had come together to discuss the strategy of the war at Yalta in the Russian
31:55Crimea
31:58Yalta was a decisive moment in the timeline of the war in that it was a meeting not about the conduct of the war
32:05but more about the post-war peace
32:08Already Churchill and Stalin had made an agreement to effectively partition Eastern Europe. They had assigned crude percentages of influence
32:18Britain was to have 90% of the influence in Greece
32:22Bulgaria and Romania were to be 90% Soviet
32:26Yalta agreed the shape of the future United Nations organization
32:31Yalta agreed to divide Germany into zones of occupation
32:37The conference also decided the post-war fate of Poland
32:42Poland's freedom was the original cause of the war
32:45Poland had been Britain's ally at a time when the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had made pacts of friendship as
32:52The leaders met Polish troops were dying and fighting alongside the armies of America and Britain yet at Yalta
33:01In return for a promise by Stalin to enter the war against Japan
33:05The Soviet Union was to be given Eastern Poland
33:09The Polish government that had fled in 1939 was to be abandoned in favor of a communist puppet government
33:18At Yalta the alliance was already dissolving into self-interest
33:23Roosevelt made a secret deal with Stalin hidden from Churchill to reward the USSR even more with territory in Asia
33:33Yalta was to condemn many thousands to die
33:37Stalin demanded the return of any Soviet citizens in the West
33:41prisoners of war
33:43Soviet
33:44anti-communists who had gone over to the Nazis
33:47The fate of these people even genuine prisoners of war who had fought bravely for the Soviet Union was mostly death or
33:55the gulag
33:59Amongst the leaders who sat in conference at Yalta
34:02Franklin Roosevelt was unique in that he was the only one of the three that subjected his war leadership to the judgment of his
34:10country
34:11Churchill sat atop a wartime coalition that had effectively suspended British democracy for the duration
34:18Stalin was of course a dictator whose power depended on fear and violence
34:22The Russian was in many ways an even greater dictator than Hitler who had come to power through democracy and enjoyed
34:30genuine popular German support
34:35The machinery of the US Constitution
34:37However would not stop for war and in November
34:411944 Roosevelt stood for election for a record fourth term
34:47Roosevelt won yet. His victory was not a landslide. He led his Republican opponent Thomas Dewey
34:54413 to 118 votes in the US Electoral College in the popular vote
35:00Roosevelt won 23 million votes to Dewey's 20 million
35:05It was a demonstration of why
35:08America was fighting the war a proof of democracy strength when pitted against dictatorship
35:16Roosevelt attended Yalta a secretly sick and dying man
35:20His death on April 10th, 1945 at the age of 63 came as a stunning surprise to the world
35:29Many US servicemen refused to believe the news
35:35On that day Vice President Harry S Truman was sworn in as 33rd president
35:42Truman was little known and thought to lack experience
35:46within minutes of his swearing in US Secretary of War Henry Stimson drew Truman aside and
35:53Revealed to him the greatest secret of the war a new explosive
35:58the atomic bomb
36:04The
36:09Allies had first reached German territory in the West as early as October
36:141944 they had seized after fierce defense the German town of Aachen on the Dutch border
36:21In fact the real border of Germany that which posed the true obstacle was the River Rhine
36:28This was to be the last major barrier to the Allies
36:32Their
36:33First objective was to clear the approaches to the river's West Bank and then seize a river crossing
36:39Most troops found the river crossings demolished by the Germans
36:43But at Remagen US troops captured a bridge by accident in the south US General George Patton
36:51Surprised German defenders with an improvised attack and seized the bridge at Mainz
37:02You
37:05In the north Bernard Montgomery made elaborately planned attacks that captured more bridgeheads in
37:12the space of three weeks the Western Allies had seized the eastern bank of the Rhine and
37:17Stood ready for the final act of the West European war
37:21One of the first moves was to surround the Ruhr the industrial region of Germany
37:27Stalin was convinced that a secret deal existed between the Western Allies and Germany that Germany would make no
37:34Resistance to the Allied attacks in the West in order to strengthen the position of America and Britain in post-war Europe
37:44The orders under which soldiers fought and died were now the product of political rivalries for power in post-war Europe
37:53Churchill wanted the Allies to race to Berlin to reach the German capital before the Russians
38:00Instead the Americans had their way and the decision was taken to allow the Russians to take Berlin
38:09As the war in Germany neared its end
38:12German forces in Italy were still providing the Allies with stiff opposition in
38:17Early April the Allied armies which had been brought to a standstill by the Germans in the winter
38:23opened a massive offensive upon the German defensive lines
38:27The Allies mounted devastating air raids and heavy artillery bombardments time and time again
38:35German defenders expected a subsequent infantry attack only to be hit again by heavy bombardment
38:42Eventually when that infantry attack came
38:46It enjoyed the special training and special equipment that bridged the obstacles of the Italian terrain
38:54The resistance of the Germans finally broke and they were trapped with their backs to the River Pole
39:00Heavy equipment and vehicles were lost and retreating Germans were forced to flee to safety
39:06Bologna fell to the Allies on April 21st
39:10Partisans had risen up in revolt and had taken over the cities of Milan and Turin
39:16The Italian people who had begun the war as enemies welcomed the Allied soldiers as liberators
39:24On April 28th as Hitler sat in his Berlin bunker
39:28Contemplating the death of both himself and of Nazism
39:31Mussolini had planned to escape to the Italian Alps and lead a last stand
39:37Driving in disguise through partisan held territory. He was captured and shot
39:43His body with that of his mistress was hung from a lamppost in a street in Milan
39:53The Italian army was forced to retreat to the Italian capital
39:57Street in Milan
40:10Iwo Jima was a dread warning of what might lie in store for the US armies who were to take part in the last great
40:16battle of the Pacific War at Okinawa
40:20In the numbers and scale of operation only the overlord landings in Normandy
40:25Exceeded the Pacific invasion of Okinawa a little more than 500 kilometers from mainland, Japan
40:32Okinawa would be the penultimate step
40:35the US committed more than half a million troops and
40:401,200 warships
40:42The US fleet was joined by the British Pacific Fleet
40:46massive preliminary
40:47bombardments by ships and planes preceded the landings on April 1st as
40:52At Iwo Jima the commander of the Japanese withdrew his forces inland
40:58Concentrating them into fortified defensive positions his aim was not to repel the invasion
41:05But to simply kill as many invaders as possible
41:12Six days after the landings the Japanese Navy mounted massive kamikaze attacks more than
41:191,900 kamikaze missions were flown and caused allied losses which were without precedent
41:28The largest total of kamikaze attacks was matched by what was perhaps the largest individual suicide mission
41:36The Yamato the largest battleship in the world was dispatched on a kamikaze mission of its own
41:43It was to smash its way through the Allied fleets and beach itself on Okinawa
41:48Thus becoming an unsinkable giant battery
41:53The battleship was however sunk en route to its mission
42:00The fighting lasted from April to June 22nd of
42:0577,000 Japanese defenders less than 1 10th were captured to become prisoners
42:1136 u.s. Warships were sunk mostly through kamikaze attacks
42:17nearly 5,000 u.s. Sailors nearly 8,000 Marines and soldiers were killed nearly
42:2432,000 wounded and over
42:27750 u.s. Aircraft shot down
42:31Okinawa made it clear to the United States that the Japanese would exact a horrific price of any invader of the
42:38Japanese home islands
42:40It was this price that lay heavily upon the shoulders of those who were to command the u.s. Forces
42:53It is perhaps a measure of the utter and total nature of the defeat inflicted upon Germany that there was to be no
43:00resistance to the occupying Allied armies
43:05As the territory of the Reich was fought over and destroyed
43:09Hitler had ordered the construction of what he called the National Redoubt
43:15This was to be a fortified region based in the mountains of southern Bavaria the home of Nazism
43:21The National Redoubt was to be manned and defended by the werewolves
43:27Fanatical Nazi terrorists who would act as an underground resistance
43:32Hitler's deputy Martin Bormann said the werewolf has been born of national socialism
43:38It makes no allowances and knows no consideration as imposed on regular troops
43:46Hatred shall be our prayer
43:48revenge our battle cry
43:51The werewolves of 1945 became as unreal as any fairy tale monster
44:09In
44:12World War two cities were to prove powerful fortifications
44:16Better perhaps than the complex specially built structures such as the Maginot line
44:21The maze of streets lined with solidly constructed public buildings themselves
44:27Labyrinths of corridors and passages were ready-made for defenders the sewers the tunnels and the cellars became
44:34Ready-made bunkers the more demolished by artillery and air bombardment the more easily defended the cities became
44:44As Russian armies pressed ever closer to Berlin Hitler retreated to his bunker deep beneath the city
44:54All through the spring of
44:561945 the Russians amassed troops for the final battle on
45:00April 10th this massive force was unleashed
45:04In spite of the desperate position of the Third Reich
45:08There was no lack of Germans prepared to fight to the very last in the defense of Berlin
45:14by April 26
45:18460,000 Russians with
45:201,500 tanks
45:2213,000 guns and
45:2526,000 rocket launchers surrounded the inner city center
45:30The city's civilians cowered in the cellars under shellfire without food or water
45:36Behind the advancing Russians of the front line came a second wave of Soviet troops
45:41Some of them freed prisoners of war bent on revenge with the mass murder rape and looting of civilians
45:50Many of those Nazis who fought in this last battle were by the chance of war
45:57Belgian Dutch or French who had volunteered to fight communism
46:04With the Russians meters away Hitler committed suicide
46:13An hour before Hitler's death Soviet soldiers had taken the Reich's chancellery
46:19Hitler had appointed Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor as leader of the German people
46:27Some of those who remained in power after Hitler's death believed in a fantasy that a truce
46:34Preparatory to peace talks could still be arranged
46:37The only answer the Russians gave was a demand for unconditional surrender and even heavier shelling
46:56On May 2nd, the German forces defending Berlin requested a ceasefire and at 3 p.m
47:04The Russian guns fell silent
47:07The last great battle of the European war had been fought with a terrible toll of death
47:14In the three weeks of fighting for Berlin, the Red Army had lost 10% of its strength the heaviest losses of the war
47:23Apart from the great collapses of the early years of Barbarossa
47:31The last days of the Reich were dominated by attempts to avoid the wrath of the Russians
47:38Dönitz attempted to buy time for Eastern armies to make fighting withdrawals
47:43The forces in the West were surrendered piecemeal
47:46On May 4th, the Netherlands, Denmark and Northwestern Germany surrendered to British General Montgomery
47:55On May 5th, the Germans offered to surrender to all American forces again hoping to buy time
48:03Eisenhower told the Germans
48:06Unconditional surrender were the only terms on offer
48:10It was agreed all German forces would cease operations on May 8th
48:15The surrender was signed at Reims in France at Eisenhower's headquarters
48:23Stalin suspected treachery and demanded a separate surrender be signed in Berlin
48:29May 8th was designated Victory in Europe Day, VE Day
48:45In
48:50Europe vast tides of humanity waves of misery swept through ruined streets and cities
48:57Desperately seeking for food shelter and safety amongst the wreckage of civilization
49:07In every city town and village of Britain and America
49:12Ecstatic crowds filled the streets to celebrate the victory
49:21Next time on World War 2 the complete history
49:25The world awakens from the party of VE Day to realize that a war remains to be fought
49:33The final act of the tragedy of the war is played out in the Pacific Ocean
49:38Fate has catapulted Harry S. Truman to the center of events
49:42the largely unknown US politician
49:46Projected into the presidency by the death of Franklin Roosevelt
49:49Now finds that he must make a decision which will end the war at a stroke
49:55His grim choice is whether or not to deploy the atomic bomb against the cities of Japan
50:01The
50:06Forces of Soviet communism continue fighting some days after VE Day
50:11Ensuring the map of Europe is a reflection of Stalin's paranoia and suspicions
50:19At the Potsdam Conference Germany is divided and dismembered divisions that will last for nearly two generations
50:27At Potsdam a new face represents Britain as Winston Churchill loses the post-war election
50:38In the ruins of Europe a swirling mass of humanity
50:42Struggles to rebuild a continent and the United States Marshall Plan is devised to create a stable future
50:49India
50:54Becomes free of the British Empire
50:59In the French colony of Vietnam a struggle begins for liberation
51:09The Iron Curtain falls as the Soviet Empire is created with all of Eastern Europe falling under the domination of the Soviet Union
51:19Oh
51:49You