Apocalypse: The Second World War (2009): Season 1, Episode 6 - L'enfer - full transcript

Italy. Early 1944.

The Germans had stopped
the Allied advance

in the area of Monte Cassino.

Perched on top of the mountain

was the ancient monastery
of St Benedict.

The Allies thought that the Germans
had turned this 1,000-year-old

edifice into a lookout post.

Allied bombers dropped 420 tons
of bombs on the monastery.

In this war, nothing was sacred.

Everything was turned
into an inferno.

This series is the epic
story of World War Two,



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 the bombing
of Monte Cassino,

on 15th March 1944, Allied
troops launched their attack.



But German paratroopers
pushed them back.

The German troops were now firmly
entrenched in the ruined monastery.

Nothing had been
achieved by the bombing.

By advancing into Germany
from the south via Italy,

Churchill's aim was to take
Berlin before the Russians could.

The Red Army continued to
advance steadily from the East.

Kiev was liberated.

The Wehrmacht pulled
out of the Ukraine,

obeying Hitler's orders to
systematically destroy everything.

Back in Italy,

the Allies finally captured their
first enemy capital, Rome.

As the Wehrmacht retreated,

it again left a path of
destructionbehind it.

But, together with Mussolini
and his remaining fascists,

the Germans retained control of
northern Italy and its industries.

Frequently attacked
by Italian partisans,

the Germans retaliated with
indiscriminate violence.

At the same time, in
southern England,

the Allied war machine was gearing
up for the Normandy Landings.

On the evening of June 5th,

American paratroopers got ready
for combat, decked out in their

Indian-style war paint and haircuts
to make themselves feel brave.

The Supreme Commander of the
Allied forces, General Eisenhower,

told them, "You are about to
embark on the Great Crusade."

The plan was to
land onfive beaches

along a 60-mile stretch
of the Normandy coast,

where the German "Atlantic Wall"
defences were the weakest.

The Allies carried out heavy bombing
raids, not only in Normandy

but everywhere north of
the Loire in France,

and in Belgium, to prevent
the Germans from predicting

where the landings would come.

Anything that could be used to
bring in German reinforcements

was bombed. Railways,
roads, bridges.

Late in the evening
of the 5th June,

gliders full of
British paratroopers,

and American Dakota transports,
crossed the Channel to Normandy.

The paratroopers were the first
to set foot in occupied France.

Their mission was to secure the
flanks of the landing zone.

The Allied invasion fleet
was the biggest armada

ever assembled - 6,000 ships.

Yet it was never
detected by the Germans.

The invasion fleet crossed the
Channel despite the stormy weather.

Bombardment and shelling from the
battleships pounded the coast,

but missed their targets on
the beach code-named Omaha.

The German defences
remained intact.

The German lookouts were
stunned by the sight of

thousands of approaching boats.

The alert was given, but
the chain of command,

up to Hitler himself,
remained sceptical.

Everyone was convinced that the
real invasion would take place

further north, along the Pas de
Calais coast, nearer to England.

6th June 1944.

6.30am.

D-Day.

The first assault wave of
American troops was getting ready

to go ashore on Omaha Beach.

Among them was the famous American
writer, Ernest Hemingway,

who was a war correspondent.
He wrote:

"As we moved in toward land,

"in the grey, early light,

"the coffin-shaped steel boats
took solid green sheets of water

"that fell on the helmeted
heads of the troops,

"packed shoulder to shoulder in the
stiff, awkward, uncomfortable,

"lonely companionship of
men going to battle."

Over 1,000 American soldiers
lost their lives here.

As the tide rolled in, the soldiers
were trapped between the sea

and the gunfire from the
German blockhouses.

Eisenhower had prepared a communique
in case the landing failed.

In a hand-written
letter, he wrote:

"My decision to
attack at this place

"was based on the best
information available.

"If there is any blame or fault
attached to the attempt,

"it is mine alone."

But a small group succeeded in
heroically climbing up the cliff

under enemy fire, and
with air support,

neutralised the German guns.

Further east, the Canadian
troops landed on their beach,

codenamed Juno.

19-year-old sailor Alfred
Turnball piloted a barge.

He said:

"By what miracle are
we still alive?

"We made it through
three mine barrages.

"The landing craft on our
right is just blown up.

"Our soldiers are landing. Oddly
enough, no-one is firing on us.

"Even the villas along the sea
wall look intact. It's unreal."

Here, there was very
little resistance.

And on the next
beach, named Gold,

there were only a few shots
at the British troops,

whose landing was a success.

The few German defenders who
had survived the bombardment

rapidly surrendered.

As soon as they pushed inland,

the Allies came up against a more
determined German resistance.

The German paratroopers,
the toughest of the tough,

nicknamed the "Green Devils",

often got the better of
the Allied soldiers.

But Field Marshal Rommel,

in command of the German forces
in Normandy, was pessimistic.

Hitler's orders were to push
the Allies back into the sea,

just like at Dunkirk
four years earlier.

For Hitler, victory in the West
depended on victory in Normandy.

Rommel replied to Hitler:

"The stubborn defence
put up by our troops

"has slowed down the
enemy's progress.

"But the Allies have total
command of the air,

"making our movements
impossible during the day.

"The air superiority of the
Allies is devastating."

Rommel himself was
severely wounded

when his car was gunned
down by the RAF.

He was evacuated
back to Germany.

Every day, 30,000 soldiers

and 40,000 tons of supplies
had to be brought ashore.

To accomplish this, a
harbour was needed.

But the Allies had decided to
stay away from the big ports,

which were too well-defended,

and to land on the
beaches of Normandy.

So, they brought two
harbours with them.

Like gigantic Meccano sets,
200 concrete caissons,

each one as big as a five-storey
building, and weighing 6,000 tons,

were assembled to
create breakwaters

and piers where the cargo ships
could unload their supplies.

American shipyards were now turning
out one of these Liberty ships,

as they were called, every day.

In less than three years,

the war industry had turned the
United States into a superpower.

11 million men were mobilised.

Its armies were now in France,
Italy, North Africa and Asia.

The power of the
United States was such

that just a few days after the
Normandy Landings in Europe,

it was able to assemble
a second fleet,

as big as the one in Normandy,

but on the otherside of the
world, in the Pacific,

in order to launch the
invasion of Saipan.

June 1944.

The Americans prepared
to launch an invasion

of the Pacific island of Saipan.

15 aircraft carriers

and 800 aircraft destroyed the
Japanese air force in a battle

which came to be known as the
Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.

A fatal blow was also dealt to
the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Then, Japan's defences
in Saipan were battered.

But when the Marines landed
on this tiny island,

which was only six miles wide,

one of the bloodiest
battles of the war began.

20,000 Americans and 30,000
Japanese were killed or wounded.

The Japanese commander on
the island, General Saito,

told his soldiers -

"There is only one
way out - death.

"We will show those American
devils what courage is."

But it was civilians,
the women and children,

who paid the highest
price, on every front.

20,000 civilians were killed
in Normandy from the Allied

bombing missions, whose aim had been
to destroy the German defences.

Normandy was in ruins.

But it had been waiting for
four years for its liberation.

The Americans advanced
with difficulty through

the farmlands of Normandy,
a labyrinth of hedgerows

and sunken paths, ideal
terrain for enemy ambushes.

The British were stuck in
the plain around Caen.

German reinforcements,
arriving from southern France,

were held up by the
French Resistance.

In retaliation, the
SS hung, shot,

and slaughtered Resistancefighters
as well as civilians.

In Oradour sur Glane
they killed all the men,

then locked the women and children
in the church and set it on fire.

A month-and-a-half after D-Day,
the fighting was still fierce.

The Allies were advancing,
but very slowly.

Eisenhower wrote -

"For each yard gained,
we have lost a man.

"This damned war could
go on for ten years."

Hitler wasabsolutely determined

to contain the Allies in
Normandy in order to protect

the launch ramps for his
"vengeance weapon",

the V1, which he started tofire
at London from northern France.

The first ever cruise missile,
the V1 was a flying bomb with

a pulse jet engine and a
one-ton explosive warhead.

The small, swift, pilotless
aircraft was difficult to intercept

and shoot down.

They were called "buzz
bombs" because they made

a motorcycle noise that alerted
Londoners when they were overhead.

By the time the V1s
reached the capital,

their fuel was used up and
their engines cut out.

No-one knew where
they would fall.

Nearly 10,000 of these
missiles killed 25,000 people.

But even under these conditions,
Londoners retained their pluck

and their composure.

But if the V1s failed to
demoralise the British,

We thought we might as well... I'm
not interested in your thoughts.

For two years, they had had to
live in underground shelters.

American bombers by day and
British bombers by night hammered

Germany's cities with
a carpet of bombs.

Two million tons of
bombs were dropped.

There were 600,000 deaths,

a million wounded,

seven million were homeless.

This was the outcome of the
strategic bombing offensive

carried out by the Allies,
with the purpose of destroying

the industrial and human potential
of Germany's wartime effort.

In the Fuhrer's headquarters, the
Wolf's Lair in East Prussia,

beneath the obligatory smiles, many
of Hitler's officers were deeply

troubled, especially those from the
old Prussian military aristocracy.

Many of them conspired in a
plot to get rid of Hitler.

One of these officers, Colonel Count
Claus von Stauffenberg, placed

a bomb under Hitler's desk during
a conference in the Wolf's Lair.

But this heavy table saved
Hitler - it deflected

the blast that killed two
generals and wounded 20 people.

Hitler, who had now escaped
five assassination attempts,

was convinced once again that he was
protected by divine providence.

That very same evening
he met with Mussolini,

who was still the leaderof the
fascist regime in northern Italy,

but was now looking for a way
to end the war, a compromise.

Hitler consoled him by telling
him about his secret weapons

and the failed
assassination attempt.

Hitler was only slightly
injured in the arm,

but the July Bomb Plot had deeply
traumatized him, affecting

his mental state, intensifying
his cruelty and his paranoia.

After the Bomb Plot, he
unleashed his revenge.

The main conspirators
were tried.

5,000 suspects were executed
and their families deported.

Hitler had no second thoughts
about executing his generals.

Because he had agreed to replace
Hitler at the head of the army,

Rommel was forced
to commit suicide.

Hypocritically, Hitler
gave him a state funeral.

From now on, real power in Nazi
Germany was in the hands of the SS.

The Russians continued
to advance in the East.

The Great Patriotic War, as they
now called it, had a new impetus.

The Red Army was able to strike with
a strength that amazed all sides.

There seemed to be an
endless supply of men,

even after the costly battles
of Moscow and Stalingrad.

The offensive in Belarus
in the summer of 1944

was the biggest battle
of the Second World War.

The front was 600 miles wide, and
the Russians were able to push

forward 400 miles in two months and
destroy three German Army groups.

The Wehrmacht retreated
towards East Prussia,

leaving behind 200,000 casualties
and 200,000 prisoners.

In the West, the Allies also
slowly gained the upper hand.

50,000 German soldiers were taken
prisoner in the Falaise pocket,

or, as the Germans called
it, Stalingrad in Normandy.

It was a great victory for
the Canadians, the Poles,

and all the Allied armies.

In Paris, the Resistance
movement came out of the shadows

and openly fought to
liberate the city.

Barricades were
erected across Paris.

Most of the German army had
retreated to the east,

but 20,000 men remained
behind, under the command

of General von Choltitz,

who had received orders from
Hitler to destroy the city.

Violent fighting broke out.

On the fourth day of the
insurrection, a French unit,

General Leclerc's Second
Armoured Division,

arrived from Normandy, and
Paris was finally liberated.

The Germans surrendered,

and General von Choltitz was taken
to the French army's headquarters.

Just before being arrested, Choltitz
had received a call from Hitler,

who asked the question,
"Is Paris burning?"

But Choltitz preferred
to turn himself in.

For the first time, this
highly disciplined officer

from an airborne regiment
disobeyed an order.

He would not appear on the
list of war criminals.

Then de Gaulle arrived, with
eloquent words for history.

With France and Belgium liberated,
and the Red Army waiting

outside Warsaw, on the other side
of the globe, Douglas MacArthur,

the American general, landed
back in the Philippines.

After escaping from the Japanese
siege three years earlier,

MacArthur had said,
"I shall return."

His return was well staged by
his public relations staff.

He proclaimed, "People of the
Philippines, I have returned.

"The hour of your
redemption is here."

But it took four more months
to liberate the Philippines.

Manila, the capital,

became the second most devastated
city of the war, after Warsaw.

Everywhere in the Pacific, the war
was marked by a form of savagery.

Everywhere there was the
same story of Marines

trapped on the beaches of
one island after another,

and everywhere there was the same
suicidal obstinacy of the Japanese.

For them, surrender was
the ultimate disgrace.

If they were captured, they
committed suicide with a grenade.

Like this Japanese pilot,
who was shot down over

the Philippine Sea and whom
the Americans were trying

to fish out of the ocean.

The man pulled the pin out
of a grenade with his teeth.

The Americans stopped
taking any risks.

Whenever they saw a
Japanese soldier,

their instinct was to kill him.

Both sides were locked into
a vicious cycle of hatred.

Along with imperialism,

the underlying cause of
World War II was racism.

Racism had given birth to Auschwitz,
the killing factory in Poland,

liberated by the Russian
offensive on 27th January 1945.

Exterminating the Jews
was, as Hitler had written

in Mein Kampf, his mission.

He sent more than
one million Jews

to their death in the gas
chambers of Auschwitz.

6 million died of starvation,
brutal treatment,

or were shot and burned in
the crematoria in Majdanak,

in Sobibor,

in Treblinka.

The Russians found a few hundred
survivors, tattooed for life.

They also intercepted the
trains full of deportees.

The Nazis continued to give
priority to these death trains,

even over the munitions convoys.

They continued making their journeys
to the 100 concentration camps

that were still operating
at the beginning of 1945.

20 million partisans, political
opponents, homosexuals and gypsies

were deported to these camps, and
five million of them died of hunger,

abuse or exhaustion.

Like the slaves working in
the underground factory

where the Nazis were building
another secret weapon - the V2.

This was the first
ballistic missile.

With a one-ton explosive warhead,
it had a range of 180 miles.

1,500 of them were
launched against London,

and 2,000 against
Antwerp in Belgium,

adding to the devastation and
to the civilian casualties.

The Allies' greatest fear was

that the V2 might one day
carry a nuclear warhead.

The eminent scientist Albert
Einstein had warned Roosevelt

about the urgency of getting
ahead of the Germans.

Huge funds were provided and a
team of scientists secretly went

to work on the
first atomic bomb.

This bomb used a metal, uranium,

that made it possible
to split the atom.

It was expected
to have the power

of 20,000 tons of
conventional explosives,

in addition to a lethal
radioactive fall-out.

The designated
target was Berlin.

But this first atomic bomb was not
finished in time for Germany.

There were no factories
left standing in Germany

that were capable of
producing such a weapon.

The carpet bombing carried out
day and night by the Allies

continued to devastate
German cities.

In February 1945, Allied
bombers attacked Dresden,

an important communications
hub for the German armies

on the Eastern Front, and the
fifth biggest industrial city

in the Reich.

Dresden, known as the
Florence of the North,

was one of Europe's
finest medieval cities.

Phosphorous bombs
created a fire typhoon

in which 40,000 people
were burned to death.

The city continued to
blaze for seven days.

Their cities were dying,

and now Goebbels and the Nazis
wanted to send all Germans

from 16 to 60 years
old to their deaths.

A new unit, the Volkssturm, the
People's Militia, was formed.

Its members declared,

"Anything is better than the
unconditional surrender

"that the Judaeo-Communists
want to impose in Germany.

"Swear to die for Adolf Hitler."

Hitler insisted there must not
be any weakening of Germany.

His generals, those who had
survived the massive purge

following the July bomb plot, no
longer dared to oppose the Fuhrer.

They obeyed his order to
launch an attack in the West,

in the Ardennes, during winter.

They would have preferred
to devote all their efforts

to fighting the Russians,
but Hitler told them,

"We have to annihilate
the British Army,

"then the Americans will sign
a separate peace with me

"because the capitalists fear
the advance of the Marxists."

Hitler hoped to recapture
the port of Antwerp,

to stop the Allies from
unloading the equipment

that would enable them
to move into Germany.

But the German offensive
in the Ardennes failed

due to the extraordinary defence

put up by American
paratroopers in Bastogne,

and to the intervention of
General Patton's tanks,

and due to the overwhelming
power of the Allied air forces.

And the Russians in the east
now crossed the German border

and entered the
Third Reich itself.

Millions of Germans fled in panic
from the approaching Soviet troops,

especially the German women,

who feared the mass rapes
that were being carried out.

Hitler's thinking turned out
to be completely wrong.

There was little disagreement

between the Western
Allies and the Russians,

and in Churchill's mind, the problem
with Germany was practically over.

He was now thinking more

about how to divide up Germany
into occupation zones.

He and Roosevelt met at Yalta in the
Crimea for a conference with Stalin.

Concerned about the increasing
losses being suffered

in the Pacific, Roosevelt
had come to press Stalin

to join the war
effort against Japan.

Stalin made Roosevelt travel
all the way to the Crimea,

which took a severe toll on the
ailing President's health.

Drawn and emaciated, he barely had
the strength to hold out his arm.

Roosevelt was very frail.

His main priority was Japan.

He didn't have the
strength to oppose Stalin.

The Red Army was liberating, but
also occupying, the Baltic states,

then Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary,
Poland, Silesia and Prussia.

There was no way to
make Stalin leave.

The only one who tried to
push Stalin was Churchill.

Finally he got Stalin to promise
to hold free elections in Poland,

a promise that would
never be kept,

and to give up Greece,
which led to a civil war.

The big achievement at
Yalta was the founding

of the organisation of the
United Nations, the UN.

Its mission would be to
seek a peaceful settlement

for all disputes, and to
protect human rights.

After the Yalta Agreements
would come the final assault

upon Nazi Germany
and Imperial Japan.

In February 1945, the war
in the Pacific still raged.

US Marines raised the American
flag on top of Mount Suribachi,

the volcano dominating
the island of Iwo Jima.

The battle took the lives of 7,000
Americans and 20,000 Japanese.

US Marine Lieutenant
John Ritch recalled -

"We all thought, if
that's how it is here,

"what will it be like
when we get to Japan?

"For all of it was clear -
we were going to die there."

It was now possible for Boeing
B29 Super Fortress bombers

taking off from Iwo Jima and
other islands in the Pacific

to reach Japan.

The scientists had invented
something even deadlier

than the phosphorous
used in Dresden.

Napalm -

gasoline mixed with
incendiary jelly.

1,700 tons were dropped in one raid
on houses made of wood and paper.

These Japanese were the
victims of their fanatical

military leaders who had
plunged them into this inferno

and who wanted to continue the
war, despite 80,000 victims

and the five million homeless from
this single air raid over Tokyo.

Hitler's Germany was now
on the verge of collapse.

Soviet forces had
surrounded Berlin.

But Hitler refused
to admit defeat.

He said, "It will be the
opposite of Stalingrad."

But his remaining soldiers,

overwhelmed by the Soviet Red
Army, surrendered en masse.

For two weeks, Berlin
became a raging inferno,

by day and by night.

A few fanatics held
out until the end,

like the 400 French SS from
the Charlemagne division,

a few desperate fighters and the
fanatical boys of the Hitler Youth.

They fought back against
one million Russians.

Beneath the ruins of the chancellery
in his underground bunker,

Hitler ranted and raved and
manoeuvred his imaginary armies.

The last of his faithful followers
took advantage of a lull

to come out and celebrate his
birthday on the 20th April.

Hitler was 56 years old.

He consoled these Hitler
Youth who had been chosen

because their parents were killed
in the bombing of Dresden.

As the Americans
advanced eastward,

they captured thousands of these
Hitler Youths sent to the front

to replace the soldiers
who had been killed.

The Americans could hardly
believe their eyes.

These boy soldiers were
afraid of nothing.

They had undergone
years of brainwashing.

Hatred and racism had been
indoctrinated into them.

The old men who were captured
with them told them,

"Children enjoy the war."

"Peace will be even
more frightful."

The Americans met up with
the Russians on the Elbe,

near Torgau, on
25th April, 1945.

East meets West.

The atmosphere was friendly.

For the cameras.

General Patton called upthe Supreme
Commander, General Eisenhower.

He wanted him to witness first-hand
the horrors of a concentration camp

discovered by his advancing
troops at Buchenwald.

Eisenhower immediately
had the inhabitants

of the nearby city of Weimar taken
there in trucks, so that they could

see for themselves what crimes
had been committed by the Nazis.

So that they could no longer say

they did not know what
had been going on.

They saw the tattoos collected
from the corpses of the deported.

The lampshades made
of human skin.

The shrunken-head paperweights.

Then, in line with the
Yalta agreements,

Eisenhower withdrew his
troops from Buchenwald,

which was located
in the Soviet zone.

Stalin immediately put
the camp back to work.

It became part of his Gulag
system, where people

suspected of hostility towards
his regime would be imprisoned.

In Berlin, the Russians were 300
yards from the Fuhrer's bunker.

Hitler killed his pet dog, Blondie,
after finally marrying Eva Braun.

She then swallowed
a cyanide pill.

Hitler shot himself in the head.

Goebbels and his wife
also committed suicide

and the SS tried to
burn their bodies.

Before that, Magda Goebbels had
poisoned her six children.

In her last letter,
she had written -

"That we can end our lives together
with the Fuhrer is a blessing

"for which we never
dared to hope."

The Soviets raised the red
flag over the Reichstag.

The principal Nazi
leaders were captured.

In Italy, Mussolini was
executed by partisans,

and his body was strung
up by the crowd.

Everywhere in Europe, a wave
of revenge was unleashed

against those who in one way
or another had collaborated

with the Nazis.

In Berlin, Russian soldiers
now directed traffic

at the Brandenburg Gate.

To defeat Nazi Germany, Russia
had paid a very high price,

20 million civilians and 8 million
soldiers had been killed.

Nearly 15% of the population
of the Soviet Union.

General Zhukov had himself

filmed in the ruins of the Grand
Chancellery of the Reich,

the very symbol of Hitler's
delusions of grandeur,

to show the world that
it was the Russians

and his army that had
crushed the German forces.

Hitler had ordered the
SS to burn his body.

The Soviets got rid of the bones

in order to prevent any
kind of hero-worship.

On 8th May, 1945, Wehrmacht
commanderField Marshal Keitel

signed the unconditional
surrender of Nazi Germany

in front of the Russian
General Zhukov

and Allied officers British
Air Marshal Tedder,

American General Spaatz,

and French General de
Lattre de Tassigny.

Keitel was later tried at the
international Nuremberg trials.

He would be hung,

like many other war criminals.

The German writer Klaus Mann

addressed his fellow
citizens, saying -

"There is nothing shameful
about this defeat.

"On the contrary,

"shame, degradation, decomposition,
the decline of German life,

"that's what national
socialism was."

Germany was in ruins.

Now all eyes turned to Japan.

In the Pacific, suicide pilots
calledby the Japanese "kamikaze",

nosedived their planes into
ships of the American fleet.

For the Japanese, even the idea
of surrender was unthinkable.

It was a supreme disgrace.

Clinging on to power,

the military chiefs in Tokyo
sacrificed what remained

of their country's youth, in
order to prevent the Americans

from landing in Japan.

In the end, the United States

decided against an
invasion of Japan,

which it was calculatedwould
cost the country a millionlives.

Instead, it detonated
the atomic bomb.

Hiroshima,

the 6th August, 1945.

The first nuclear bomb ever
exploded in history killed,

in a few seconds, up
to 100,000 people.

Then, three days later, there was a
second atomic bomb, at Nagasaki.

The bombs finally enabled of
Emperor Hirohito to seek peace

without losing face.

The atomic bombs had to be dropped
before these Japanese soldiers

and officers would finally
consent to give up their arms,

which was so contrary to their
Bushido code of honour.

The war took the lives
of 50 million people,

twice as many civilians
as soldiers,

in an outpouring of
extreme violence.

Thousands of victims suffered
for many years afterwards

from the appalling after-effects
of nuclear radiation.

Or from the terrible loss
of parents or children,

exterminated in the Nazi camps.

The tragedy of the Second World
War must never be forgotten.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd