Apocalypse: The Second World War (2009): Season 1, Episode 5 - L'étau - full transcript

RAPID GUNFIRE

EXPLOSIONS

Stalingrad at the end
of October 1942.

The city on the Volga
had still not fallen.

German soldiers listened to
the Fuhrer on the radio.

"We have taken Stalingrad.

"A few pockets of
resistance remain.

"We will take them one by one,
it's just a question of time."

For Hitler, the fate
of the Third Reich

depended on what
happened at Stalingrad.

This series is the epic
story of World War II...



..as it raged across
countries and continents,

as millions of soldiers fought
from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

It is the moving story of
the millions of civilians,

whose homes were destroyed
and lives disrupted...

..as they were caught up
in the cataclysm of war.

To tell this story, the best footage
of the war has been painstakingly

transformed, using digital
techniques, into colour.

Along with original colour home
movies, it gives a completely

new perspective to one of the
greatest events of the last century.

This is the powerful story of the
Apocalypse, and of the people

who fought the Second World War.

After two years of bitter
fighting in Russia,

the Eastern Front was
at a standstill.

In the north, Leningrad was still
surrounded by the Germans.



After 700 days of siege, the
Soviets continued to resist.

In the centre, Moscow had still
not been captured by the Germans.

In the south, the drive towards the
Baku oilfields had come to a halt

in the Caucasian mountains.

In Stalingrad, the Russians
were holding their ground.

Contrary to Hitler's
declarations,

Soviet boats continued to cross the
Volga, bringing reinforcements.

Every day, thousands of young men,
sometimes without any weapons

or military training, were
disembarked on the riverbank.

Those who backed away
from the German shells

were ruthlessly executed by
the political commissars.

One officer, Colonel
Ludnikov declares:

"We fight for each and
every metre of earth.

"But our metre is different,
it is the Stalingrad metre.

"Every centimetre counts.

"We bite the earth.

"We do not retreat."

The Germans tried to drive
them out with flame-throwers.

Stalingrad became
a raging inferno.

On the 7th of November,

the anniversary of the Revolution,
the beleaguered soldiers

holding Stalingrad and the
Russian troops along the Front

heard their commander
in chief, Stalin,

make this astonishing
declaration:

"Tomorrow there will be
celebrations in our streets!"

General Georgi Zhukov, the
man who had saved Moscow,

had a plan for Stalingrad -

to keep the tiny centres
of resistance fighting on

in order to keep the German
troops of General von Paulus

inside the city.

Meanwhile, on the other
side of the Volga,

Zhukov was secretly
assembling a new army.

Every man had to swear
an oath to Stalin.

IN TRANSLATION FROM RUSSIAN

The Soviet Union
had been ravaged.

A quarter of its
territory had been lost.

But workers across the
entire Soviet Union

were toiling to
provide this new army

with huge amounts of equipment.

Factories that were moved out
and rebuilt on the Asian border

were operating 24 hours a day.

Here, countless lives
would also be sacrificed.

In the winter of 1942,

the women working in these unheated
workshops were cold and hungry.

Many died, simply of exhaustion.

But the country's industrial
production increased tenfold.

The United States was also
providing massive aid to Russia.

The Allies were able
to reduce the threat

posed by German U-boats
in the North Atlantic

by forming convoys protected by the
Navy to bring supplies to Britain.

Anti-Communism was a
thing of the past.

For the Americans, Joseph
Stalin was now "Uncle Joe".

In Britain, he was
"Good old Joe".

The Russians received huge shipments
of Jeeps, tanks, planes, trucks,

and corned beef.

When they opened the tinned meat,
the Russian soldiers joked,

"We're opening the
second front."

Everyone expected the Allies to
do more to help the Russians.

Stalin called for a Second Front,
for landings in occupied Europe.

In Egypt, however, the British
were pushed back by the Germans.

Rommel was promoted by Hitler to
Field Marshall after his victories

in the desert, and
his tank army,

the Afrika Korps, was getting
dangerously close to the Suez Canal.

They had reached El Alamein -

just 80 miles from Cairo.

CHEERING

Prime Minister Winston Churchill
paid a visit to Egypt

to encourage his
army in the desert.

The situation was grim, but he
retained his sense of humour.

He said, "The secret to good health
is to drink, smoke and, above all,

"to do no exercise."

And yet he had already
suffered a minor heart attack.

He met with the newly-appointed
General, Bernard Montgomery.

Montgomery wasn't Churchill's first
choice, but he was now in command

of the 8th Army, made up of British,
Australians, New Zealanders,

South Africans and
Free French soldiers.

As soon as he arrived, Montgomery
ordered a new programme

of physical exercises and
discipline to be imposed.

One of his officers, Captain
Belchem, remembered:

"What struck us was that
he was small and thin.

"He wasn't tanned
like the rest of us.

"He said a few words
for the occasion.

"'We're going to fight at El
Alamein, and we'll come out of it

"'dead or alive.' And he hung a
picture of Rommel in his tent."

Montgomery was the
opposite of Rommel.

He was cautious, not daring.

He waited until his
army was superior

in terms of both men and equipment.
He was lucky to get the new,

American, Sherman tanks,
built for speed and power.

But paths still needed
to be cleared for them

through the desert minefields.

Captain Belchem explained:

"There is nothing more horrible.

"Everyone had planted mines.
Millions of them.

"The German mines with the double
springs were the most diabolical."

EXPLOSION

"The poor chap who stepped
on one would hear the click,

"but nothing would happen.

"Then when he
raised his foot..."

EXPLOSION

On the 23rd of October 1942,

Montgomery finally
launched his offensive,

with an artillery barrage followed
by a massive tank assault.

But the German 88mm guns
caused tremendous losses.

Rommel's soldiers
counter-attacked relentlessly.

The battle turned into
a bayonet charge,

just like at the Battle
of the Somme in 1916,

with heavy casualties
on both sides.

But in this deadly game, the side
with most men and guns would win.

Rommel wrote:

"We're simply being crushed
by the enemy's weight."

He received a message
from Hitler telling him,

"There can be no other
thought than to stand fast,

"yield not a yard of ground."

Rommel wrote in
his secret diary:

"I rack my brains for a way out of
this plight for my poor troops.

"We are facing perhaps the most
difficult days a man can undergo.

"The dead are lucky -
it's all over for them."

Finally, Rommel
ordered a retreat.

He saved his men by stealing
petrol from his Italian allies,

who were left to
be taken prisoner,

even though they had fought
courageously during the battle.

CHURCHILL'S VOICE OVER PA

In London,

Churchill announced what was the
first good news of the war.

Now, this is not the end.

It is not even the
beginning of the end.

But it is, perhaps, the
end of the beginning.

"The end of the beginning."

Churchill's words rang
out around the world.

The British lion had
stood up to Hitler.

Back in his headquarters, the
Wolf's Lair, Hitler was scornful.

He declared, "It's
just a setback.

"The war will go on."

Two weeks after the
victory at El Alamein,

the Allies opened up a new Front
with landings in North Africa.

A first step towards
controlling the Mediterranean.

As in the First World War,

American troops sailed across the
Atlantic to join a European war.

Outside Casablanca and Oran, the
British and Americans landings

were greeted with heavy
gunfire from the French.

North Africa was still controlled
by the French Vichy regime,

which collaborated
with the Germans.

So now Frenchmen were fighting
against British and American troops.

The Free French leader,
General de Gaulle,

broadcast over the
radio from London.

After two days of heavy fighting,
the French guns fell silent.

The Allied landings then
continued unopposed.

In Algiers, the pragmatic
US Commander-In-Chief,

General Dwight D Eisenhower,

negotiated with the Vichy regime's
military commander, Admiral Darlan.

Darlan was one of France
most diehard collaborators.

He had even met Hitler.

But now he decided to switch sides,
and the French forces in Algeria

and Morocco joined the Allies.

A few weeks later,

Darlan would be assassinated by
a French Resistance fighter.

CHEERING

At last, the Americans
were greeted

warmly by the French
in North Africa.

But Hitler had countered the
Allies by occupying Tunisia,

a country still controlled
by the Vichy regime,

which allowed the
Germans to stay.

Rommel was retreating
towards Tunisia.

Then, in order to secure
the Mediterranean coast,

Hitler invaded the southern half of
France, the unoccupied Free Zone.

Hitler's orders were to
take the port of Toulon,

where most of the
French navy was based.

Petain's admirals decided
to scuttle their fleet.

They sunk their own ships in order
to keep them from falling into

the hands of the Germans.

Or the Allies.

This was the price paid for the
compromises of the Petain regime.

But also, it was a
blow for Hitler.

The arrival of the Germans spread
terror throughout the former

Free Zone, where many Jews had
found a precarious refuge.

Amid the increasingly sinister
atmosphere of round-ups

and denunciations
all over Europe,

children were saved by
courageous families,

like Carl de Brouwer's family.

De Brouwer was a Belgian banker.

He filmed his four children,
while he and his wife Denise

hid two Jewish children.

Monique Mogoulsky, the 12-year-old
daughter of an engineer -

who was himself in
hiding somewhere -

and six-year-old Adrien Sapcaru.

Adrien's mother was arrested
and deported to a work camp

in Eastern Europe.

She would never return
from Auschwitz.

By now, many people began to suspect
that when the occupiers used words

like "work camp", what they
really meant was "death camp".

Carl and Denise de Brouwer
were everyday heroes who would

later be awarded the title of
Righteous Among The Nations,

along with nearly 20,000
other men and women

from all over occupied Europe.

1,200 miles away,
outside Stalingrad,

the Germans were enjoying a brief
respite before returning to fight

the Russians and to eliminate the
remaining pockets of resistance.

The German army's flanks
were defended by units from

the Reich satellite countries
- Romanians, Hungarians

and Italians, who were totally
unaware of the danger looming.

A few miles away, the Soviet
troops were preparing to attack.

They were filled with hate.
And there were more than

a million of them.

Their plan was to storm the enemy's
weakest units in order to surround

the German army
occupying Stalingrad.

At 5am on November 19th,

3,000 guns and Katyushas
opened up on the enemy lines.

An Italian soldier fighting
alongside the Germans,

Eugenio Corti,
described the scene.

The rockets came down
as fast as hail.

The ground was shaking,
just like in an earthquake.

Zhukov's massive army now
went on the offensive.

The Hungarians collapsed because
they didn't have enough ammunition.

The Romanians were defeated
because they didn't have

any anti-tank weapons.

The Italians were slaughtered.

The two Russian armies from the
north and the south met up,

and Soviet film-makers
recreated the moment of glory.

The Germans watched as the Russian
tanks closed the circle around them.

General von Paulus's Sixth Army was
now trapped inside Stalingrad.

Hitler was at the Berghof, his
retreat in the Bavarian Alps,

when he was informed of
the Soviet offensive.

His immediate reaction was
to tell his associates,

"We have to hide this news
from the German people."

He rushed to his headquarters
in East Prussia, declaring,

If the Sixth Army withdraws
from Stalingrad,

the Wehrmacht will never
be able to return there.

General von Paulus could still have
broken out of the encirclement,

but he would have had
to disobey orders.

For when Hitler arrived
at the Wolf's Lair,

he sent him this message.

"Stand firm.

"An army will come
to rescue you."

But no army was able to reach them
and the aircraft of the Luftwaffe

failed to provide them
with sufficient supplies,

in spite of the promises made by

the head of the air
force, Hermann Goering.

At Christmas, rations
were reduced

to 50 grams of bread
and 12 grams of fat.

Paul Gerhardt Moeller, a 30-year-old
medical corps soldier, wrote home.

Dearest Magdalena.

This letter is an attempt,

probably the last, to
contact the outside world.

My darling,

I don't want to cause you any
needless pain, but you should be

aware of what things
are like here.

There are so many wounded.

The situation is much more
miserable than anything

we have experienced until now.

I want to thank you again for being
so faithful and for your love.

I've caused you to suffer too
often, and that makes me very sad.

Please forgive me.

Lieutenant von
Loebbecke wrote...

On our radios, we heard a Russian
repeating over and over in German,

"A German soldier dies in
Russia every seven seconds.

"Stalingrad Massengrab."

Stalingrad, a mass grave.

Mussolini, who had just lost an
army at Stalingrad, was desperate

for a way to end the war.

He said to Hitler, "I am convinced
that Russia can never be destroyed.

"A territory that big could
never be conquered."

He took Hitler aside and added,
"The Russian chapter is over.

"We should make
peace with Stalin."

But for Hitler, to agree to
negotiate was to admit that

the campaign in Russia
had been a huge failure.

Nonetheless, secret talks were
started through the intermediary

of Sweden and the Vatican.

Future events, however, would
not give Hitler any choice.

On the 13th of January 1943

Roosevelt, the President
of the United States,

arrived in Casablanca to attend his
first big conference overseas.

He and Churchill wanted to

agree on the priorities for the
next stage of the war in the west.

Churchill and the British team were
clearly focused on their objectives.

After several days of talks, the
Prime Minister and the President

agreed on the way ahead.

At the closing press conference,
Roosevelt and Churchill

made a declaration of
the utmost importance.

They announced that the ultimate
objective of Allied policy

was the unconditional surrender
of Germany, Japan and Italy.

There would be no
more negotiating.

The Allies would keep fighting the
Axis powers until the very end.

The price in lives would be high, and
many believed that this position,

whose purpose was to
reassure the Russians,

would only increase the devotion of
the German people to their Fuhrer.

Stalin was satisfied.

He feared that Hitler would conclude
a separate peace with the Allies

in order to pit all of his
forces against Russia.

He now launched his
offensive to annihilate

the remains of the German Army still
inside the ruins of Stalingrad.

A Soviet captain, Joseph
Praoutov, wrote to his wife:

"I feel better now.

"We've got the better
of those snakes.

"We've captured a lot of them."

"They're starting to pay for
the blood they have shed,

"for the tears of our people.

"I'll be home soon. I'm
sending you 500 roubles.

"Joseph."

The Russians fought their way
to the centre of the city.

Beyond the Red Flag was a building
where the commander of the 6th Army,

General Friedrich von
Paulus, was entrenched.

His men surrendered one by one.

Then Von Paulus himself surrendered,
on the 31st of January 1943.

The day before, Hitler had
promoted him to Field Marshal,

thinking it would compel him to commit
suicide in order to save his honour.

But Von Paulus, on the verge of
collapse, weakened by dysentery

and disgusted by the absurdity

of Hitler's orders, let
himself be captured.

Field Marshal Von Paulus was a
fantastic prize for the Russians.

He was the man who had
masterminded Operation Barbarossa,

the invasion of
the Soviet Union.

The Soviet officials
could hardly believe it

and asked him for his military
papers to verify his identity.

Von Paulus went on to
collaborate with the Russians

and testified at the Nuremberg Trials
against his former commanders.

He later chose to live in
Communist East Germany.

His reaction was mainly a rejection
of Hitler's senseless policies.

Many of his men
felt the same way.

"Hitler can go to the devil", the
German prisoners dared to mutter

in the few words of Russian they knew.
"We want to go home."

After the German defeat at
Stalingrad, hope was revived

among the people in every country
occupied by Nazi Germany.

The German news broadcasts
did not, of course,

show any of these images.
And Hitler said:

"We must not use the
word surrender.

"We must explain that our men

"were unable to receive supplies,
and that's why they were beaten.

"We have to use the
word sacrifice."

The Nazis tried to turn this
disaster into an opportunity

for galvanizing the
German people.

At a huge rally in Berlin's
Sports Palace, Joseph Goebbels,

the Minister of Propaganda, tried
to mobilize the nation's energy

and resources after the defeat.

CROWD SINGS

In the audience, ecstatic,
was Albert Speer.

He provided Hitler with the
means to implement total war.

Hitler called him
his only friend.

This 38-year-old architect,
creator of the Fuhrer's

wild architectural dreams, had been
appointed Minister of Armaments.

Speer gave a new impetus
to German war industry.

He was a brilliant organiser but,
above all, he was an ardent Nazi.

Under his orders, four million
Soviet civilians were rounded up

and worked to
exhaustion or death.

After Russia and Poland,
it was occupied France

that provided the Nazis with the
greatest number of workers.

The Vichy regime handed out

compulsory work permits and sent
600,000 French workers to Germany.

Behind the walls of
the Warsaw Ghetto,

the Germans were confronted
by a Jewish uprising.

EXPLOSION

Before the war, the Warsaw
Ghetto had been a lively,

open district, filmed in colour
here by an American tourist.

These Jews were just like the
characters in the Yiddish novels

of Sholem Aleichem, who wrote, "May
everyone remember us with a smile."

These were the same
human beings in 1940.

The Nazis had turned the ghetto
into an overpopulated prison.

This woman shrieks in grief

as she carries her dead
child through its streets.

This was the ghetto in 1941.

In 1942.

In 1943.

The Nazis deliberately starved the
people in order to weaken them

and prevent any kind of revolt.

But the Jews managed to smuggle in
weapons, and they died fighting.

The survivors were deported to

the Treblinka extermination
camp, and murdered.

The ghetto was razed
to the ground.

At the same time, the
Allies won another victory.

British and American armies
triumphantly entered Tunis.

CROWDS CHEER

Behind these gates, the Germans
had already initiated policies

to persecute the Jews in Tunisia
during their short-lived occupation.

The Allies immediately told them
to remove their yellow stars.

The Italian prisoners were
jeered at by the crowds.

Rommel, stranded in Tunisia, was
filmed by one of his officers

before he boarded one of the
last planes leaving for Germany.

He wrote:

"I have received instructions

"to take sick leave and get
myself back into shape.

"All my efforts to save my men and get
them back to Europe have been fruitless.

"Orders have been issued by
the Fuhrer's headquarters

"to maintain the utmost secrecy
concerning my recall to Germany.

"My military reputation is still
to serve as a deterrent."

Rommel's entire army,
the Afrika Korps,

was captured and was now marching
in long lines towards the ships of

the American fleet, to be taken away
to the other side of the Atlantic.

During the war, 380,000
German prisoners

were sent to Canada and the United
States, where escape was impossible.

These prisoners were about to
embark on a strange odyssey.

It began on these
military transport ships.

Many felt like they
were in a dream.

For them, the war was
over and they were safe.

But for these German soldiers, even
here, the Nazis remained in control.

These men disembarking in Canada

insisted on making the
"Heil Hitler" salute -

even if they only had one arm.

On the Eastern Front, since
the fall of Stalingrad,

the Wehrmacht was
no longer the same.

The soldiers exchanged
rumours about the Fuhrer.

"Apparently, he's lost his head.

"He's being secretly
held in Berchtesgaden.

"It's his double
that we're seeing."

But the rumours were untrue.

Hitler, here in the Berghof, was
filmed by his mistress Eva Braun.

Since his army's defeat at
Stalingrad and El Alamein,

he had changed. His famous
moustache had greyed.

One of his generals, von Senger,
was struck by his appearance.

"His skin was flaccid. The look
in his blue eyes, which had

"so mesmerised the crowds,
was reddened by insomnia."

His physician, Dr Morell, made
up cocaine eye drops for him.

Morell was able to make him
presentable for public ceremonies.

But Hitler was careful
to hide his left arm.

It tended to tremble,

because he was starting to show
signs of Parkinson's disease.

As a result, the head of the SS,

Heinrich Himmler, became
even more important.

The SS, whose recruits came
from the Hitler Youth,

started out as the Schutzstaffel,
the protection squad

for Nazi officials.

Later, it provided the guards
for the concentration camps.

The SS had now created a powerful
army of its own, the Waffen SS.

In the future, these elite troops
under Himmler's orders were expected

to replace the Wehrmacht, which
was no longer considered

completely loyal.

Himmler recruited increasingly in
the occupied countries, like these

fanatics in the Bosnian SS.

In the occupied areas of Russia,
the SS also had no difficulty

recruiting two divisions of Cossacks
who, in the time of the Tsars,

had been notorious for their
bloody anti-Semitic pogroms.

They formed the fearsome
15th SS Cavalry Corps.

The Wehrmacht enlisted one

million Soviet prisoners who
were given a simple choice -

die of hunger or fight
alongside the Germans.

Some, like former Soviet

general Andrei Vlasov,
were also against Stalin.

Vlasov, a hero of the battle of
Leningrad, was taken prisoner

and then changed sides.

He went on to command the
Russian Liberation Army

under the flag of the Wehrmacht.

The Germans kitted out these foreign
troops with the best equipment,

such as the Tiger tank, designed
by the brilliant engineer

Ferdinand Porsche.

And with its 88mm gun,

the most effective in the war, one
Tiger was worth ten Allied tanks.

Back in the Wolf's Lair, Hitler
now began to feel hopeful again.

He could renew his obsession
with destroying the Red Army.

He planned a new attack

at Kursk.

The Russians had pushed forward
into the German front line,

offering an opportunity to
encircle and crush them.

It was called
Operation Zitadelle.

It was the biggest
armoured clash in history,

2,700 German tanks against
3,600 Soviet tanks.

But the technical superiority
of the Tiger was overwhelming.

Hitler was confident.

To lead his force of 600,000
soldiers, he had chosen the man

who had won the
Battle of France -

Field Marshal Erich
von Manstein.

The offensive, led
by the Tiger tanks,

broke through the Soviet lines but
encountered massive anti-armour

defences built by the Russians along
with dense concentrations of tanks.

The Wehrmacht's troops
were pushed back.

They had the impression that the enemy knew
exactly where they were going to attack.

Each time, the
T-34 Russian tanks

were already there,
waiting in ambush.

In fact, code breakers at Bletchley
Park in Britain had succeeded in

capturing and decoding the German
encryption machine called Enigma,

and they were now able to read

almost all of the top-secret

German orders.

Churchill passed on much of
this information to Stalin

without telling him where
the intelligence came from.

The Soviets thought the British

had very good agents
inside Nazi Germany.

This war was also
an espionage war.

At Kursk, the outcome
was devastating for

the Germans, who lost 50,000 men
in the first phase of the battle.

Von Manstein wanted reinforcements
in order to continue his offensive.

Hitler came to visit the front.

Manstein immediately told him,
"We've suffered losses, but the

"Russians have,
too, even worse."

Hitler seemed very hesitant.

He muttered a few inanities.

Von Manstein later wrote, "He
seemed to me to be quite feeble."

This impression was
confirmed when von Manstein

showed Hitler the figures of
the losses incurred at Kursk.

Since the beginning of the war,
two million German soldiers had

been killed, wounded or
gone missing in action.

The Waffen SS would never
be able to fill that void.

Things were now a far cry
from the victories of the

lightning-war campaigns, like the
Blitzkrieg conquest of France.

Kursk was the real turning
point in the war,

because Hitler moved
onto the defensive.

Overcome by paranoia, he insisted
on having stenographers present to

record for posterity everything that
was said at this crucial moment.

Von Manstein argued that
not everything was lost.

But Hitler disagreed.

Von Manstein pleaded with him
to continue the offensive.

Hitler refused. The
Battle of Kursk was over.

For Hitler, the priority was now
to send reinforcements to Sicily,

where the American and British
armies had just landed.

The noose was tightening.

Things were moving fast.

All Hitler could do was try to
hold back the advancing Allies.

But he was unable to prevent the
fall of Mussolini, which led Italy

to surrender and
to change sides.

The new Italian government had
Mussolini imprisoned up in the

mountains.

Hitler sent an airborne
commando squad to rescue him.

Hitler wanted Mussolini
back in power.

He sent him back to Italy

to re-establish his fascist regime
with the help of the German army.

Hitler ordered

the military occupation of Italy and
had no qualms about slaughtering

any of his former allies
who attempted to resist.

He occupied Rome and immediately
started rounding up Jews.

Hitler's main concern was to prevent
any further Allied landings in Italy

but above all in France.

This was the idea behind the
construction of Fortress Europe with

its Atlantic wall, a vast system
of fortifications stretching from

Norway down to the
Spanish border.

Rommel was put in charge of
defending Fortress Europe. He said,

"It is absolutely necessary

"that we push the British and the
Americans back from the beaches.

"Afterwards, it
will be too late.

"The first 24 hours of the
invasion will be decisive.

"It will be the longest day."

For Rommel and the Nazis, this
was the beginning of the end.

But these German newsreel
images of Rommel, who had been

invited to tea by Magda Goebbels, the
wife of the propaganda minister,

show how the Nazis wanted to project
themselves at this point in the war.

Nazi ideology put total faith in
victory and vanquished all doubt.

Magda Goebbels worshipped
Hitler like a god even

though he was driving Germany into
a frenzy of bloodshed and death.

She had given her six children
first names that all begin with H,

just like Hitler -

Helga, Hildegard, Helmut,
Holdine, Hedwig and Heidrun.

She would kill them all, one by
one, on the last day of the Reich.