The World at War Episode 25 - Reckoning (1945...and after)
Transcript
00:00The bombing has stopped, the fires are out, Europe lies in ruins, the dead are gone forever,
00:23the living carry on.
00:35Everywhere the same, no gas, no water, no telephones, no trams.
00:49Time to count the cost, time to start again.
01:07Time to start again, time to start again, time to start again, time to start again.
01:34Springtime, 1945, the end of the war in central Europe.
02:03The end of the thousand-year Reich, untidy, messy, a time without pity, a time of brutality,
02:31rape, revenge.
02:51The Germans come back from the eastern lands they'd tried to conquer, where some had lived
02:56for generations.
02:58They'd been bad masters, now they pay the price.
03:03At least they are alive.
03:27The last hours of the Wehrmacht, an army in dissolution.
03:34It has made war on the world, now it saves what it can.
03:38The mood of the German troops who were surrendering, I think, was one of relief.
03:43They were happy, for the most part, to surrender.
03:47They were interested in getting to the American lines, to preference to surrendering to the
03:52advancing Russian line.
04:18A defeated army, but even at the end, not always a broken one.
04:29The habits of a lifetime die hard.
04:32But at last, the bloodletting is nearly over.
04:50You had a European Civil War that began in 1914.
04:53There was a long armistice in that war.
04:57Finally comes to an end in 1945.
04:59In the process of coming to the end, what happens is that sweeping into Europe from
05:03the outside are the Russians and the Americans.
05:07They meet at Torgau on the Elbe River in May of 1945, with the result that no European
05:15nation wins the European Civil War.
05:18The winners in the European Civil War are, in fact, outsiders, the Russians and the Americans.
05:22Most of all, the Americans.
05:24So that you have the physical control of the continent in the hands of three outsiders,
05:31really, because the British were a part of it, although they only contributed 25% of
05:35the whole total to Eisenhower's Anglo-American force.
05:38But Britain, the United States, and Russia now control the continent.
05:42And they will decide what's going to happen to it.
05:47Neither Russians nor Americans had wanted this war.
05:50Now comrades, in arms, they've won a great victory.
05:55When their generals meet, they can speak the language of combat, of tanks and guns.
06:00But have they anything in common except soldiers' talk?
06:18Russians were overjoyed.
06:19But we also.
06:20There was handshaking and back-slapping and exchange of souvenirs.
06:26I have a Russian watch and somebody's gold wedding band, and I lost my watch, I lost
06:36all sorts of insignia from the uniform.
06:40They were all very friendly.
06:41All the Russians were very friendly.
06:42A lot of them didn't speak English.
06:44And yet there were a few that spoke beautiful English, that were educated, say, at Oxford
06:48and Cambridge.
06:49I remember speaking to one, and I thought, oh, I'll never forget your face as long as
06:52I live.
06:53If there's another war, I'll never forget you.
06:56Because he was rather young.
06:58He was quite young.
07:00And he was very pleasant.
07:01But you always kept feeling that they really hated us, which I'm sure they did.
07:18The United States, of course, during the war had been propagandized into seeing Russia
07:24as a democracy, a land of freedom lovers, with essentially broad social aims about the
07:30same as those of the West, which seemed to make sense, since they were clearly an enemy
07:34of the Nazis, and we were an enemy of the Nazis, thus it appeared we had a great deal
07:37in common.
07:40Fellow Delegates, the President of the United States of America.
07:51San Francisco, April 1945, a month before VE Day.
07:55The United Nations organization is born.
07:59The charter of the United Nations, which you are now signing, is a solid structure upon
08:05which we can build for a better world.
08:08There was great hope in the world that this would, in fact, happen, that this was the
08:11last war, that the victors would now be able to cooperate in peace as they had in war,
08:17to see to it that the four policemen, as Roosevelt liked to refer to Britain, France, the USSR,
08:21and the United States, sometimes the five policemen with China thrown in, would be able
08:26to see to it there would be no more aggression in the world.
08:34That the war had meant something, that it had been fought for something, rather than
08:37simply against Nazism.
08:39Well, there's a time for making plans, and there's a time for action.
08:45The time for action is here, now.
08:49Nation by nation, the delegates stand up for the great new charter they hammered out together.
08:55Fifty nations standing side by side, unanimous for peace.
09:01Now, final signing of the charter, China signing first as the first nation attacked in this
09:06war.
09:07Dr. Wellington Coo's signature topping the long list to come.
09:11Then, for Russia, Ambassador Gromyko commits his country also to the agreements and objectives
09:18decided upon.
09:19After days and nights of compromise and cooperation, four main agencies upon which the world now
09:25puts its hope.
09:26A better world was going to emerge, and one part of this, of course, was it would be a
09:30non-colonial world, a world of self-determination.
09:34And this was felt very deeply in 1945, even by the most cynical of the world's leaders.
09:41I suspect even Stalin felt it.
09:42I'm sure that Harry Truman felt it, and Winston Churchill felt it, and the common people everywhere
09:48felt it.
09:55Germany remains, even in defeat, the key to the problems of Europe.
10:00She started the war, so her leaders have to be punished.
10:03The Germans themselves have to be made to pay for the suffering they have caused.
10:08But they cannot pay if Germany remains a heap of rubble, or if the country is dismembered,
10:13as some wish.
10:15No one wants Germany to be strong again, yet no one can face the consequences of keeping
10:20her a ruin forever.
10:24The answer, military control.
10:27Four armies of occupation will supervise Germany's recovery.
10:31The watchful Allied generals will build her up, but only in order to make good again what
10:36she has destroyed.
10:40Germany can remain whole, united, but must never be able to threaten the peace again.
10:52July, 1945.
10:54The military administration gets underway.
10:58American troops have occupied Leipzig, a city well within the Russian zone of occupation.
11:03Now the Americans pull back, west, across the river Elbe.
11:24The Russians move in.
11:52The Germans, weary, watchful, nervously smiling, see their Russian conquerors for the first
11:58time.
12:07When the fighting stopped, the armies ended up here.
12:11But the occupation zones had been decided earlier at the Big Three Conference at Yalta.
12:16There were to be four zones.
12:18The Russian zone had the food and raw materials.
12:20The western zones, American, British, French, had the industry.
12:24For the occupation to work as intended, there would have to be trade between them.
12:29Berlin, the capital, became the home of the Allied Control Council, a testing ground for
12:35the plan to work together.
12:37Now there's been some question as to whether we were not, we weren't a little premature
12:42in fixing these zones until we saw how the armies were going to come out.
12:46And there's some evidence to indicate that our leaders underestimated the striking force
12:52of the Anglo-American armies that invaded Europe.
12:55Because when we adopted the zonal positions, we gave up Saxony and Thuringia.
13:02But on the other hand, we got back, I think, good pieces of Western Austria, which had
13:07been occupied by the Soviets.
13:09The thing that stands out here is that the Russians do let the West come into Berlin,
13:13which is, what, 80 miles within their zone.
13:16They didn't have to do it.
13:18And they could have acted in Berlin as they acted in Poland.
13:21They could have just said, to hell with you, we're not letting you in, we're not going
13:25to live up to the agreements that we signed at Yalta on this.
13:28We're going to hold on to Berlin.
13:30After all, we captured it.
13:31We paid the cost.
13:32100,000 Russians died.
13:34Berlin, July 1945.
13:38The big three meet for the Potsdam Conference.
13:41A crowded agenda for this first meeting of victors.
13:49But for the West, one question dominates.
13:52What does Stalin want?
13:55At our first meetings, Stalin put forward at once the demands which the Russians maintained
14:01right through until the meeting of Potsdam.
14:05What he wanted was basically to ensure the security of his own country, regardless, of
14:13course, of the interests of his neighbours.
14:15I'd seen a good deal of him during the war, of course, and I went up to him and I said,
14:20Marshal, this must be a great satisfaction to you, after all the trials that you've been
14:25through and the tragedy that you've been through, to be here in Berlin.
14:29And he looked at me and said, Tsar Alexander got to Paris.
14:36The conference takes no new decisions about Europe.
14:39It simply confirms what has been decided at Yalta six months before.
14:44What is new is the mood.
14:48Despite smiles for the newsreels, the Western leaders and Stalin do not get on.
14:53The feeling, especially in the States and most especially with President Truman, was
14:59that, aha, Stalin is another Hitler.
15:02They didn't think, oh, we made a great mistake in the war and backed the wrong side, not
15:06a bit of it.
15:07But they were perfectly clear that Hitler was much the greater menace, and that Hitler
15:10had to be crushed, and that the crushing of Hitler absolutely depended upon the Red Army.
15:17The Red Army has 300 divisions in Europe.
15:20They are Stalin's trump card, the source of his strength at the conference table.
15:32Suddenly you are faced with the fact that the Americans are demobilizing, or rather
15:36at the time of Potsdam what they were doing was redeploying, pulling the army out of Europe,
15:42taking it back to the States and getting it ready to send over to Japan, because they
15:45expected at that time to have to invade the home islands for the final defeat of Japan.
15:49I was invited to see President Truman.
15:52And he shut all the doors and told me in great secrecy, the greatest secret of the war, the
15:58fact that the Americans had an atomic bomb which they were going to drop very soon, which
16:04he thought would bring the war to an end.
16:06He even said the reason for his decision was this would save thousands upon thousands of
16:11Allied lives who would otherwise be lost in that frightful massacre which would take place
16:16on the shores of Japan itself.
16:20He warned me that I might find myself suddenly in a position with the Japanese having surrendered.
16:27Then I saw Churchill, and Churchill told me the same thing.
16:32He said they will surrender.
16:35And what are you going to do about it?
16:36I said, well, he just told me, I haven't given it a thought.
16:49August 1945.
16:52The bomb is dropped.
16:54The Japanese do surrender.
16:56Their cities, too, have been laid waste.
17:00Their dreams of conquest shattered.
17:03They, too, are at the mercy of their conquerors.
17:06They do not know what lies in store.
17:13Americans wanted Japan rebuilt as quickly as possible and a highly industrialized Japan
17:18to emerge from the war within, well within the American orbit.
17:23Truman made the decision at Potsdam that no one would be allowed into Japan except
17:27for American troops.
17:29The Aussies weren't let in.
17:31The British were not let in, and, of course, most of all, the Russians were not let in.
17:38The conqueror comes, General Douglas MacArthur, with his American advisors, his American court.
17:47He will try and remake Japan in America's image.
17:58The prisoners are free, U.S. airmen who burnt Japan's cities to the ground.
18:05They are the masters now.
18:20In Europe, it is still summer.
18:22There are 700,000 concentration camp survivors, maybe enough to be alive, to be reunited,
18:32to have survived, to go home.
19:02Six million former slave laborers, Poles, Russians, Yugoslavs, Estonians, Czechs, French,
19:26free to pick up the threads of their lives now that their German masters have gone.
19:47Prisoners of war with no country to go to, deportees, Germans, soldiers, deserters.
19:56It was very difficult to tell the difference between a German refugee and a Polish refugee
20:01in the part of Germany that I was located in.
20:04I wouldn't know which were which.
20:06You could be pretty well sure if they were humping things on their back and carrying
20:10bags but they hadn't got a truck, they were almost certainly refugees.
20:17Or perhaps SS guards in stolen prison clothes.
20:33Some choose death.
20:35Himmler, lord of the SS, takes poison.
20:38Some surrender or are caught.
20:41Von Rundstedt, Hitler's general in full dress uniform.
20:47Admiral Dönitz, last leader of the Third Reich.
20:51Albert Speer, what to do with these broken monsters?
20:55Stalin at the Yalta conference, which was attended by President Roosevelt and Mr Churchill,
21:01said that he thought that 50,000 of the German general staff and officers should be gathered
21:10together and summarily executed.
21:14He wasn't joking.
21:16President Roosevelt thought he was and President Roosevelt said, oh well, perhaps 49,000.
21:22But Churchill said that he'd rather be taken out into the garden and shot at once than
21:28be a party to such an iniquity.
21:31But the Russians persisted almost until the end in saying that there should be no trial.
21:38These men were criminals and they should be immediately executed the moment they were
21:42caught.
21:45There is a war crimes trial at Nuremberg, Hitler's city.
21:49The charges?
21:51Crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, waging aggressive war.
21:57The defendants are all German.
22:00Curing is called to plead guilty or not guilty.
22:29I informed the court that defendants were not entitled to make a statement.
22:40You must plead guilty or not guilty.
22:57Rudolf Heerst, that will be entered as a plea of not guilty.
23:16I think you'd say the purpose was a two-fold one.
23:20The first was retribution, the punishment of people who had launched this war against
23:26the world, and not only the war, but who prior to the commencement of the war and during
23:33it had, of course, committed the most terrible crimes against humanity, as for instance by
23:40exterminating certainly 7 million Jews.
23:44The second purpose of the trial was, as we hoped, to lay down the rules of international
23:53law for the future, not only making the waging of aggressive war unlawful, but for the first
24:02time making the statesmen who led their countries into an aggressive war personally responsible
24:09for what they'd done.
24:10Twelve million men, women, and children have died thus.
24:11Murder in cold blood.
24:12Millions upon millions more today are dying.
24:13mourn their fathers and their mothers, their husbands, their wives, and their children.
24:28I was rather surprised at the appearance of the defendants.
24:31I thought, well, if I'd seen these people in the Clapham omnibus, I wouldn't have looked
24:37at them twice.
24:39And I think that was true of all of them, except perhaps Hess and Ribbentrop, who both
24:46looked pretty miserable creatures, and Goering, who looked a very remarkable personality.
24:54He did dominate the court.
24:56He was the outstanding personality in the court.
25:00And you know, sometimes in the course of a long trial like that, lasting over 200 days
25:06it lasted, something would go wrong.
25:10You would ask a witness a question, and the answer you expected to get would be yes, and
25:15the witness would answer no.
25:18And at that point, you had to be very careful not to catch Goering's eye.
25:23He was sitting at the corner of the front row, and if you glanced across at him or caught
25:29his eye when there was an incident like that, he would raise his eyebrow and shake his head
25:35in a rather smiling way, and it would be very difficult not to smile back.
25:48Goering cheats the gallows with a cyanide pill.
25:52The rest are hanged, or imprisoned, or set free.
25:57They have brought their revolution to Germany, and death to Europe.
26:02Their mad adventure over, now they pay their reckoning for Hitler's Reich.
26:18The British come back to Asia in triumph.
26:22An empty victory.
26:24India is no longer docile.
26:26Two million of her troops fought for Britain in Britain's war.
26:30Now they want their own country to be free.
26:33His Majesty's African troops, they want freedom too.
26:37Malaya, Burma.
26:40Britain is too weak to hold them, even if she wants to.
26:48The main effect of the war against Japan in the Far East was the nourishing of the spirit
26:54of nationalism in Asia.
26:56A large part of Asia, of course, had been under British rule,
26:59and most of that that was not under British rule was under Dutch rule,
27:02or some European rule, and the people were beginning to aspire
27:07to the creation of their own political institutions.
27:12The demonstration by the Japanese that the British could be beaten,
27:16and beaten very severely, naturally encouraged in the eyes of the people
27:23of Southeast Asia the belief that they too might be able to secure
27:27a much stronger position against the British than they'd previously dreamt possible.
27:31This had a great effect on opinion in India and all over Southeast Asia.
27:35Suddenly I find myself responsible, as the Supreme Commander,
27:40for an enormous area of the globe, with a distance of 6,000 miles across it,
27:47that's as far as from London to Bombay, with 128 million starving
27:53and rather rebellious people who'd just been liberated,
27:58with 123,000 prisoners-born internees, many of whom were dying,
28:03and we had to try and recover quickly.
28:05And at the very beginning, I had some 700,000 Japanese soldiers,
28:10sailors and airmen to take the surrender, disarm, put into prison camps,
28:16awaiting transportation back.
28:19Even looking at that, it sounded a big problem,
28:21but I had no idea what I really was in for.
28:23What I really was in for was trying to re-establish civilization
28:27and the rule of law and order through this vast part of the world.
28:33We didn't even know what the conditions were going to be.
28:36I had no staff really trained or qualified to help me in this task,
28:43except some professional civil affairs officers from various countries concerned,
28:47whose one idea was to go back and carry on where they left off,
28:50three or four years before.
28:55The police are not ideal either.
28:58Indonesians do not want the Dutch back.
29:01If order must be maintained in the East Indies,
29:05there is only one force to do it, the Japanese army.
29:10Mountbatten uses them there, and in Singapore as well.
29:18It may sound odd now, after the war,
29:21but at the time, and it still makes sense,
29:24what was I to do?
29:26If I was to order them to lay down their arms
29:29and concentrate themselves in prison camps,
29:32and leave the outside world without policemen or anything at all,
29:36that would have been very odd.
29:38No, I think that they had to carry on as they were
29:41until they were effectively relieved.
29:43That's the only order I gave.
29:45I didn't consciously employ them.
29:47They carried on until I could relieve them
29:49with Allied soldiers as soon as possible.
29:56Americans are in Japan to stay.
29:59Almost everywhere else in Asia, white men prepare to leave.
30:03Reluctantly, uncomprehendingly, the Dutch go.
30:08The French are different.
30:10They will not give up Indochina.
30:15They send troops to take it back,
30:17commanded by General Leclerc,
30:19a hero of the European war.
30:21In my final conversation with General Leclerc,
30:23when I was about to turn over the military responsible
30:26for the South of French Indochina to him,
30:28I urged him to try and make friends,
30:31friends with the local inhabitants,
30:33friends with the local insurgents,
30:35because I said that's the way for France to come back,
30:37with a friendly relationship.
30:39I don't think you can impose by military means
30:41your old colonial rule.
30:43He said, I see the point.
30:45I'm sorry. I'm a soldier.
30:47My instructions are to take over the military way.
30:49And that, of course, is what he did.
31:04So the killing goes on.
31:07It goes on there to this day.
31:18Berlin, in the first months of occupation.
31:20Thierry Freulein wants the handmaidens
31:22of Hitler's new order.
31:37Some of the victors have the time of their lives.
31:54Germany was on a cigarette and chocolate bar economy.
31:57This was right after the war,
31:59right after combat.
32:01And as a consequence,
32:03there's very little that an American can do
32:05and as a consequence,
32:07there's very little that an American soldier
32:09couldn't buy if he wanted to buy it,
32:11including services of all sorts.
32:18It's the same old story of a boy and a girl.
32:20If you want to get together,
32:22there isn't any rule in the book or any law
32:24that says you can't or you're not going to do it.
32:28The black market was blooming.
32:30We had nothing.
32:32And a piece of soap was the most valuable possession.
32:34So you practically prostituted yourself
32:39just to get a piece of soap,
32:41maybe a can of coffee,
32:43or maybe even some cigarettes.
32:45People who smoked.
32:47I didn't.
32:49But you just did everything.
32:51I know people, very, very fine people,
32:55who just would have done anything.
32:59And you lose some of your human dignity
33:02when you are so hungry,
33:04when you are so without food,
33:06without clothing,
33:08without everything.
33:11How could you blame a starving girl?
33:13She might not want stockings,
33:15she might not want cigarettes,
33:17or bicycles, or butter,
33:19but she did want badly something,
33:21which could be provided
33:23by the appropriate,
33:25typically British or American, G.I.
33:27I had to give up smoking in the streets.
33:29In those days, I was a cigarette smoker,
33:31and carelessly, after all,
33:33there was a lot of rubble about,
33:35you'd throw your cigarette on the floor.
33:37Before you knew where you were,
33:39the fellow had almost caught it in his hand.
33:41He'd been trailing you,
33:43because he saw you were smoking.
33:45And I remember that in one of the cinemas,
33:47I think it was in, it doesn't matter,
33:49it was in one of the big towns,
33:51where there was going to be a performance
33:53for the American G.I.s.
33:55And they'd queued up before it started.
33:57Well, of course, the Americans
33:59don't allow smoking in cigarettes,
34:01but they were all smoking in the queues.
34:03And practically opposite every smoker,
34:05there were a line of hungry-looking men,
34:07hungry for tobacco,
34:09waiting until the doors opened.
34:11And then as the cigarettes fell into the street,
34:13there was a rat rush.
34:15And the key place in that queue
34:17was just at the entrance to the cinema,
34:19because that's where most of the cigarettes came down.
34:21In retrospect, this being a conqueror
34:23seems very dubious to me.
34:25But at the time,
34:27it seemed quite right.
34:29We were convinced of our virtue
34:31and the German vice.
34:33And it was very pleasing
34:35to be able to tell them what to do.
34:37And I think that's the reason
34:39why it's so popular.
34:41And I think that's the reason
34:43why it's so popular.
34:45And I think that's the reason
34:47why it's so popular.
34:49To tell them what to do.
34:59Time to rebuild.
35:01Time for Germany to recover
35:03so it can start to pay.
35:09The Russians want $20 billion in reparations.
35:11Americans think
35:13that's more than Germany itself is worth.
35:15The West won't help
35:17the Russians collect that much.
35:19They stop sending goods
35:21and hardware to the East.
35:23The Russians send
35:25little food and raw materials
35:27to the West.
35:29The Allies are starting to fall out
35:31with each other.
35:47The Germans, caught in the middle,
35:49get on with rebuilding themselves.
35:51There are no slave labourers now.
36:17They had cleared the street
36:19and trams went by.
36:21I should have hated to have tried to ride on one.
36:23They were packed to the roof.
36:25There were people hanging on the outside
36:27of the open windows,
36:29though it was cold.
36:31There were people standing on the buffers.
36:33And there were patient queues
36:35to get on these trams when they stopped.
36:37But nobody ever seemed to me to get off.
36:47The Suchtdienst,
36:49the missing persons register.
36:55Twelve million Germans
36:57driven from the eastern lands
36:59trying to find each other.
37:01They're not alone.
37:05Sixty million Europeans
37:07have been uprooted.
37:09They're not alone.
37:11They're not alone.
37:13They're not alone.
37:15Sixty million Europeans have been uprooted.
37:17Some never find their way home again.
37:33November 1945.
37:35The Germans live on
37:371,500 calories a day,
37:39a third of what the American troops get.
37:41It was a very hard time
37:43because we suffered
37:45from hunger.
37:47And the Americans had
37:49much food.
37:51My mother decided to
37:53work for them.
37:55And I decided to
37:57work
37:59for them too.
38:01And my mother was in the kitchen
38:03and I was a waitress.
38:09Well, it was
38:11very hard for me because
38:13the Americans ordered
38:15that I
38:17had to smile always.
38:21And I couldn't smile
38:23because the
38:25American officers
38:27were so proud
38:29and they treated us
38:31as Nazis.
38:35No peace conference ever takes place.
38:37There is no new Versailles.
38:39Germany is divided.
38:41The occupation zones
38:43become frontiers.
38:45Unintended, unwelcomed
38:47and permanent.
38:49If you have a unified
38:51Germany that belongs to the Russians,
38:53then you have a Russian domination
38:55of the continent, of the whole of the continent.
38:57If you have a unified Germany
38:59that is altogether in the hands
39:01of the Anglo-Americans,
39:03then you have a western domination
39:05of the continent that would
39:07cheat Russia out of her
39:09just claims to
39:11the security that was, of course,
39:13Stalin's number one concern
39:15all through the war and afterwards.
39:17So that dividing Germany
39:19along the Elbe
39:21was probably the
39:23best solution. One's tempted to use words
39:25like fair and just, but I don't think
39:27they really apply here. It simply is
39:29the workable solution.
39:31Wherever the Red Army
39:33was in the contiguous territory,
39:35they would install a Sovietized
39:37system and that there was just no
39:39argument about it. And we did the very best
39:41we could on Poland. The tragedy
39:43of Poland, of course, is that she's got
39:45Germany for a neighbor on one side and Russia
39:47for a neighbor on the other side. It's a terrible
39:49position to be in, but it's always been the
39:51Polish dilemma and the Polish tragedy.
39:53Poland has to fall into the orbit of one
39:55or the other. Given those choices
39:57and given the nature of Hitler and the nature
39:59of Stalin, I suppose if I were a Pole, I'd say,
40:01well, we're better off under Stalin's heel than we
40:03are under Hitler's heel.
40:05Soldiers of Poland,
40:07I wish you all a speedy
40:09and safe return
40:11to your home country.
40:28Poland's tragedy.
40:30Russia's triumph.
40:32Victory Day in Moscow.
40:34The Russians
40:36paid an enormous price for victory, of course,
40:38but the Russians did get gains out of the war,
40:40most of all security for themselves and control
40:42of East Europe and the opportunity,
40:44which they, of course, quickly took advantage
40:46of to exploit East Europe economically.
40:50A nation bled white by war has
40:52somehow to rebuild.
40:54The Soviet Union has survived.
40:56It is one of the
40:58world's great powers.
41:00But now everyone knows it.
41:16London, 1945.
41:18Eros comes home.
41:20Britain.
41:29Britain has survived too,
41:31but a curious victory.
41:38You can picnic again,
41:40but look out for unexploded mines.
41:50London, 1945.
42:06No invasion, no occupation,
42:08yet the nation's treasure is exhausted.
42:10For six years
42:12it has fought and been
42:14a workshop for war.
42:16The bullets have been bought
42:18for Britain's wealth.
42:20They won't be needed now.
42:22Britain has won the war
42:24and has nearly gone bankrupt doing it.
42:28The British had as many problems
42:30if not more in recovering from victory
42:32as the Germans did in recovering from defeat.
42:34The British
42:36wanted Britain to get out of the war.
42:38Not very much.
42:40She lost a very great deal.
42:42I suppose
42:44if you want to look at it positively,
42:46she got a moral claim
42:48on the world as the nation
42:50that had stood against Hitler alone
42:52for a year, and it provided
42:54the moral leadership against the Nazis
42:56at a time when everyone else was willing
42:58to cave in to the Nazis.
43:02America, 1945.
43:04The boys come home
43:06again.
43:16Well, the big winner in World War II
43:18is, of course, the United States of America.
43:20By far, we get much more
43:22out of the war than anyone else.
43:24There's a paradox here
43:26that very quickly
43:28after the war was over,
43:30Americans began to take the attitude
43:32that, ah-ha, here it is again.
43:34We've got a war.
43:36We've got a war.
43:38We've got a war.
43:40We've got a war.
43:42We've got a war.
43:44Here it is again.
43:46We got fooled once more
43:48as we did in World War I.
43:50We made this enormous effort.
43:52We beat the Germans.
43:54We beat the Japanese.
43:56And who wins? The Russians win.
43:58The Russians get East Europe out of it.
44:00We were suckers.
44:02This was very widely felt
44:04in the United States.
44:06It was a strange attitude to hold
44:08when you look with whatever objectivity
44:10that one can muster about such things
44:12Americans come home to a country
44:14untouched by bombs or shells.
44:16A country twice as rich
44:18as when the war began.
44:20More food than it can eat.
44:22More clothes than it can wear.
44:24More steel than it can use.
44:26The only country in the world
44:28with money to spare.
44:30The country
44:32with the atom bomb.
44:42The war.
44:44The war.
44:46The war.
44:48The war.
44:50The war.
44:52The war.
44:54The war.
44:56The war.
45:02The Germans too are victors
45:04though they do not know it yet.
45:06The soldiers come home
45:08from internment camps,
45:10the clothes go back to work.
45:12Feudal, Prussian,
45:14peasant Germany is no more.
45:16In its place,
45:18the structure of a modern state.
45:20Ironically enough,
45:22that was Hitler's work.
45:24Now in the West,
45:26a new Germany will emerge,
45:28rich and free and democratic
45:30and strong.
45:32England too changes,
45:34though some voices stay the same.
45:36You will be taken to the civilian
45:38clothing depot
45:40to get your civilian suit.
45:42And after that a bus will take you down
45:44to the station and you're free
45:46then to push off home as fast as you can.
45:48The procedure
45:50is comprehensive, for as you can see
45:52there are a lot of things to be thought of
45:54when a man or a woman leaves the army.
45:56Civilian life nowadays
45:58is fairly full of snags and the ex-soldier
46:00must be fully armed against them
46:02when he marches into Civvy Street at last.
46:04Information pamphlet, 14 day ration card.
46:06Thank you. Good luck and thanks for all you have done.
46:08Thank you very much, sir.
46:10AC plot. Sir, 252.
46:12Oh, coming.
46:16Britain's soldiers come home
46:18to a land without much cheer,
46:20to a land of ration cards,
46:22queues, black markets
46:24and austerity.
46:26But to a land
46:28of national health
46:30and the welfare state.
46:32To a land of free men and women.
46:34To a world
46:36no longer at war.
47:04In the first place,
47:06if
47:08we hadn't won the war,
47:10would have meant that the Japanese
47:12and the Germans, particularly the Germans, would have won it.
47:14And I just think you
47:16could imagine what kind of a world that would have been.
47:18It's true
47:20that
47:22the problem of Russia,
47:24of the Soviet Union rather,
47:26emerged sharply after the war.
47:28But I would say
47:30on the whole that that was certainly the lesser
47:32of the two evils that could have
47:34happened.
47:36And
47:38the more or less
47:40principles on which
47:42democracies operate, which their societies
47:44are based,
47:46certainly didn't get much
47:48satisfaction out of the results
47:50of the war, but I think this was inevitable
47:52given the Soviet system.
47:54On the other hand, there's still a large
47:56portion of the world that still is able
47:58to exercise a certain
48:00degree of freedom, particularly
48:02in their internal affairs.
48:04Not that by any manner of means
48:06that everything that isn't communist is
48:08perfect, far from it.
48:10But by and large, I think the world would have been
48:12quite intolerable under Nazi
48:14and Japanese rule.
48:16The principal effects of the war
48:18on people and political systems
48:20bore upon
48:22the countries in Eastern Europe, Poland
48:24most of all, Czechoslovakia,
48:26Hungary, Romania,
48:28and those countries.
48:30Now, these peoples were hoping, or
48:32some of them were hoping, that the war
48:34would liberate them from the threat of
48:36Nazi tyranny, and in fact
48:38at the end of it, they found themselves
48:40in the communist bloc,
48:42which I must say was
48:44far less sinister than the Nazi bloc.
48:46This was a very solid achievement
48:48of the Second World War.
48:50A very much less sinister type of tyranny
48:52replaced a highly sinister
48:54tyranny. But this was not
48:56the freedom for which they had hoped
48:58and for which to a large extent
49:00we had fought.
49:02The most important single result of World War II
49:04is that the Nazis were
49:06crushed, the militarists in Japan
49:08were crushed, the fascists in Italy
49:10were crushed, and surely justice
49:12has never been better served.
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50:12in Europe.
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