The World at War (1973–1974): Season 1, Episode 21 - Nemesis: Germany - February-May 1945 - full transcript

Dresden - the great,
beautiful and historic city

so far barely touched by the war,

believed by its inhabitants
to be somehow inviolate -

became, in the technical language
of the experts,

a severe case of over-bombing.

We had so many refugees
who had come from the Eastern Front

that at this point
the city had swollen to double its size.

The only men we had in the city

were from the veterans' hospital,
blind and crippled.

The blind were trying to carry
the cripples and couldn't see their way.

And some people who tried to walk along,
they were pulled in by the fire.



They all of 2 sudden disappeared
right in front of you.

There is such a draught
in a firestorm like that.

It's a most horrible thing.

You have to save yourself
or try to get as far away from the fire

because the draught pulls you in.

Next day came the Americans.

A Western demonstration
of support for the Russians,

now less than 100 miles away.

Over 1300 Flying Fortresses
to pound the ruins of a city.

The city was in flames
but after three days we had to go in

and try to find the people
and take them out of the ruins.

And sometimes a washbasinful
contained nine, ten people,

because their size had shrunk
to just a small amount.

We just couldn't believe
that this was a whole person.



And this picture is just terrible.

I saw sometimes
two people close together

who maybe in despair had...
It was one tiny little figure.

In the centre of the city,
cordoned off from the survivors,

they built great funeral pyres.

There was no time
to dig individual graves.

We had to dig mass graves.

They tried to identify by jewellery
or by belongings,

but many people could not be identified.

Later in the ruins
you found inscriptions:

"Hans, are you alive?"

"Martha, are you still in the ruins?"

Industrial damage was slight.

The railway was working again
in three days.

But over 100,000 died.

Dresden was another monument
to total war.

The last Nazi newsreel
the Germans saw.

It features scratch units in action
on the Eastern Front, on German soil.

The slogans now play on sexual fear
of the Red hordes.

The main propaganda weapon -
stories of rape,

stereotyped accounts
backed by dubious pictures

in which the corpses
may, for once, be German.

Tales of brutal soldiery told
in the stock language of racial hatred -

beasts, rape, animals, bestiality.

Sie haben meine Schwester
und meine Mutter

in bestialischer
und tierischer Weise misshandeilt.

Refugees from Germany's eastern
provinces and the occupied territories.

Families were separated,
never to be reunited.

Thousands died from drowning,
thousands from shelling.

The great German Reich was shrinking.

The Germans coming home.

On the Western Front

the Allied air forces
ranged at will beyond the Rhine,

paralysing all movement
in preparation for the final assault.

With bombs, rockets and cannonfire

they struck at bridges, railways, roads,
at a single horse and cart.

It was my duty to tell Hitler

that from the point of view of armaments
the war was lost.

And I did it in several memorandums,

and the harshest one was 19 March '45

in which I told him very bluntly,
which nobody dared to tell,

that the war will be finished
within four or six weeks.

Hitler boasted
of losses in infantry

made good by countless numbers
of new units.

He himself
presented medals to his new recruits.

What they lacked in experience they made
up for in National Socialist ardour.

A young runner reports how
he carried weapons up to the front line.

Als der Russe n?dher heranriickte,
bestand meine Aufgabe darin,

Meldungen zu den einzelnen
Kompaniegefechtsstdnden...

His reward,
an Iron Cross Second Class.

March 24.

The Rhine crossing.

Montgomery's last showpiece battle.

Upstream the Americans
slipped across almost unopposed.

The goal the field commanders
had in mind - Berlin.

Across the Rhine now.

From the Dutch border
to the Black Forest in the south,

the Allied columns pushed on
into the heart of Germany

through scenes that were
the commonplace of war.

Towns and villages that burned

as the towns and villages
of Poland, France, Russia,

Yugoslavia and Greece had burned.

But for these civilians, for the women
and children who saw the war go past,

there were no ghettos
and no gas chambers.

Only, in some, a sense of anger.

The first time I have
had hatred against Hitler and the Nazis

was not hatred
against the terror regime,

it was hatred like among gangsters.

Hitler promised us
to win half of the world

and he asked us to help him

and so we have done,

and now we have nothing.

We have only our clothes.

The collapse
of Nazi government had left a vacuum.

The advancing troops
were politically innocent.

Their methods were rough and ready.

TheBlirgermeister's
the first one you meet.

He'd have his sash on

and he would inform us
that he was not a Nazi,

the town council was not.

We would promptly round them all up

and ship them out
because we knew we had all the Nazis.

You put soldiers with townspeople

and after the first couple of hours
of a small amount of tension

when both parties realised that the
other was not gonna stab them suddenly,

we'd find ourselves swapping
hard tack or chocolate

for a cooked meal
by one of the German families.

And they in turn would show us family
pictures - not the uniform ones -

and then you'd find a GI
showing his family to them.

It's funny how the feeling
could change so rapidly.

Some woman came to me. In addition
to trying to offer me her own services,

she was trying to obtain something else.

I looked at her. I was feeling
particularly mean that day.

My father was sick and the Red Cross
had given me information

that my brother-in-law had been killed
in Germany. Word had just come to me

and I was about ready to tear anyone
apart with my own two hands.

And I said in desperation almost:

"Don't bother me.
You're dealing with a Jew."

"You don't want anything to do with me."

And she looked at me and she said,
"Aber Sie sind ein weilRer Jude",

which you can translate,
"But you are a white Jew."

And I did everything to restrain myself
from just belting her in the mouth.

The camps were overrun.

Many Germans had known of them.
Others had preferred not to know.

Now they were forced to see.

In one place the mayor and his wife
went home and hanged themselves.

This is Buchenwald.

Those who had survived deportation,
slave labour,

selection for the death camps,
starvation,

were from every country in Europe,

of all callings, of many religions,
many political faiths.

Some turned on their oppressors.

Allied prisoners were freed.

German soldiers went into captivity.

Displaced persons, ordinary Germans,
prisoners of war passed on the roads

and had nothing to say to each other.

Germany was an ant heap
some giant had kicked to pieces.

Here and there, looting.

Brief opportunities to celebrate
the collapse of the system.

The victors had their own views
on law and order.

Some property was still sacred.

in April '45,
Berlin was more ruins than a town.

In the centre of Berlin,

one could find almost no building
which was still intact.

But it was my wish
to have the Berlin Philharmonic

having a concert for the last time.

I knew that it would be my last concert
for a long time, perhaps forever,

and I invited friends

and as many people as possible to go in.

We were sitting there in our coats
because there was no heating.

It was cold and it was shivering

and in this atmosphere
of destruction and misery

the concert started and we started

with the last part
of theG?tterddmmerung.

Hitler no longer
made public appearances.

More and more he withdrew

to his underground headquarters beneath
the Imperial Chancellery - the bunker.

When I came back from this
concert for the military conference,

we came into the bunker
and Hitler was almost out of his mind.

And Goebbels was already there.

And Hitler showed to us the wires he'd
just received of the death of Roosevelt.

Goebbels was jumping up and saying,
"That's it. That's it!"

"Now we have got it. Now I think
everything will turn to the better."

In the east, over railway
lines converted to the Russian gauge,

the Russian command was piling up
vast supplies of material.

Six armies were involved.

To smash the German forces
on the approaches to Berlin

and take the capital of Nazi Germany.

On the 75th anniversary
of Lenin's birth, 16 April 1945,

the massed artillery opened fire.

My heart was going smaller
and I get very anxious

because I knew that the attack began.

The first barrage was
less effective than Zhukov had hoped.

The Germans were still secure
in their second line of defence.

In the centre of the front,
opposite Berlin,

there were 400 guns to the mile
to open a way for the assault tanks.

The Red Army was over the Oder,

reinforcing and breaking out
of its bridgeheads.

The armoured columns pushed ahead
against desperate resistance.

Some of our young boys, they jumped
out of the holes, had their Panzerfaust

and they were shooting to the tanks
and destroyed more than four tanks,

and the others
were shooting with their guns

and killed all the Russian soldiers.

And the Russians must have been
before in aMagazin,

or in a sweet factory,

because they had all their arms
full of sweets and chocolate.

Everybody in our unit was 15 and 16

and they were running onto the street
with the chocolate.

In the west it was a different story.

Sidestepping pockets of the enemy
the Allied columns moved east.

You could pick up the telephone
and ring up the next village

to see if it was still German-occupied.

Say,
"Hello, what's happening down there?"

One had almost moved into
a dreamlike and unreal situation

where towns and villages
flew by with no resistance at all.

Normal countryside, no damage at all.

And every day one said to oneself,
"Surely this can't go on."

Certainly, I think,
the thought of one's own survival

after all this gradually became
more and more uppermost.

When one did run into
any sort of determined resistance,

it was a matter of half anger:

"How dare these people
prolong the agony any more?"

And the other half
was jolly nearly a blue funk.

Uelzen,
a little town in northern Germany,

30 miles short of the Elbe.
Here the Germans did stand and fight.

There was an edginess now
among the Allied fighting men,

their fingers quick on the trigger.

Their opponents were elite troops
and officer cadets.

It took a four-day battle
with considerable losses

and many civilian deaths
before resistance collapsed.

Mostly the Germans
surrendered thankfully.

Their main aim - to go into captivity
with the Anglo-Americans

rather than with the Russians

on whose land and population
they had inflicted such losses.

Desperately they strove
to reach safety in the west.

In the Ruhr pocket
over 300,000 men of Army Group B

were surrounded and forced to surrender.

The Western Allies
had achieved their main objective -

the destruction
of the German land forces in the west.

It wasn't until the first half of April

that he retired to the bunker,

because the air raids
were getting worse and more frequent.

The bunker was divided up in such a way

that in the lower area
there was a military conference chamber

with an anteroom
which led to Hitler's study.

His workroom and bedroom
led off this anteroom

and also a room
with a bathroom for Eva Braun.

There were some women in Hitler's
former life who were important for him,

but I think during the last time

there was nobody else near
and as close to him like Eva Braun.

She loved him really
and she came surprisingly to Berlin

and when she arrived, Hitler tried
to seem angry but he wasn't successful.

His eyes were so full of joy

and he was obviously so happy
that she was there

that nobody tried to send her back.

The Russians
were now firing on Berlin itself,

their forward troops
already in the outskirts

fighting their way
from street to street.

So came his birthday, 20 April,

and there came the congratulations

and everybody shook his hand
and wished him the best.

It was all very depressed,

it was not a happy birthday.

And when the official part was over

Hitler retired at once,
but Eva Braun invited some of the people

to go upstairs in her little living room
to make a birthday party.

And one found a record, a hit song,
to dance with music.

And then we sat around the table and
tried to forget our miserable situation.

There was laughing and joking

and everybody drank
and giggled and gaggled.

It was a very artificial
sort of gayness.

After there was
another conference on the situation,

but it was already apparent
that it was getting near the end.

Reichsleiter Bormann said to me
that I should put everything in motion

so that we would have luggage ready

in case of a possible move
to the Berghof in Berchtesgaden.

He refused absolutely and said,
"No, I cannot leave Berlin."

"I have to make a decision here
in Berlin or I have to go under."

And this was the first time

that he ever mentioned the possibility
that we could not win,

that he mentioned the chance of defeat.

I remember April 201945,

that was the birthday of Adolf Hitler,

and on the radio there was a speech
of Joseph Goebbels.

And he said, "Berlin will remain German

and Vienna will be German again."

And my mother said,
"God thanks, we will win the war?,

and I said, "Mother, you are wrong
and Goebbels is wrong."

"It's terrible,
but I am quite sure the war is over

and we will lose the war."

And my mother said,
"Do you think in this hour

Goebbels will tell us a lie?"

The battle for Berlin
itself was extremely difficult.

It had to be taken street by street,
house by house,

some of them nine and ten storeys high,
and there were lots of these houses.

The fascists held out on every floor.

They had also set up barricades
in every street.

They'd converted the main buildings
into strongpoints against us.

We were in Berlin now and in this
evening we just visit my mother

and she was very nearly crying,

because she thought
maybe I'm dead or something.

And it was late in the evening
and we wanted to sleep there,

but some men of the house came
and they said, "It's impossible."

"You can't sleep here because
the Russians are not far from here

and if they arrive here by night
and they see you here with guns,

maybe they will shoot us.?

So we couldn't sleep there.

We went over the street,
there was a school, and we slept there.

On the 21st,

we went on together into the outer ring
of the suburbs of Berlin itself.

The order of the day of our high command
reverberated through the whole country.

They were heard throughout the world:

"Our soldiers have broken into Berlin."

The Russians
worked out their tactics in detail

using models of streets and buildings.

Behind the apparent chaos
of the fighting lay a precise plan

to encircle the city
and strike at the centre.

Some troops had come all across Russia

through territory the retreating Germans
had looted, burned, destroyed.

Berliners sheltering in their cellars

wondered what their fate would be
at Russian hands.

Even the children
had not been evacuated.

They all lived in cellars.

I went into the cellars

and remember most of all
the repetition of this phrase:

"When will this nightmare end?"

Suddenly on April 22, I think - yes -

they came out of the military conference

with a totally stony face

and dark, frightened eyes

and he called us to come
to this little anteroom.

He sent for Eva Braun
and for the secretaries and for the cook

who was still in Berlin
who cooked for him.

And then he came in
and said with a monotone voice

and so unkindly
as we never had heard him speak to us:

"Ladies,
please pack your things at once."

"You have to go to the south.?

"The last aeroplane
starts in about an hour."

And then it was silent.
"No", he said, "it's all lost."

"There's no hope. You have to go."

And then was a moment
of absolute silence

and we stood shocked.

Suddenly Eva Braun made a few steps,

went to Hitler and said:

"But you know I don't leave you.
I stay on your side.?

"You know that.
Don't try to send me away."

Then Hitler
did something very astonishing

which he never did
and nobody had ever seen such a gesture.

He kissed her on her lips.

And then it happened
that the other girls and me too,

we heard us saying, "We'll stay, too."?

This situation in the bunker

was a fantastic one.

One really can't...

An unrealistic one.

One really can't describe

how the moods
went on and off like waves.

Sometimes they were all exhilarating
and were thinking,

"Well, now the Western troops
coming for release of Berlin..."

Goebbels was exclaiming

one of the biggest decisions of war
Hitler just made,

he is now determined

no more to fight against the West,
only to the East in Berlin,

and this will mean
that the Western powers

will join us
in our fight against Russia.

Such things happened every now and then.

And then a few minutes afterwards
everybody was speaking about suicide

and how they are preparing it.

Goebbels in detail was saying

how he will let his children be killed
who were already in the bunker.

After a few days
the telegram came from Goring

which said,"Mein fuhrer..."

No longer "my belovedFiihrer?,
just "myFdhrer?.

"I know that you are now totally cut off

and are no longer in possession
of full freedom to command."

"According to the law of succession,
I will now step into your position

and will undertake to represent Germany
both in internal and external matters."

"Yours, Goring.?

Hitler was so worked up over this.

He sat in his chair
and could not grasp it at first.

This was added to by Bormann
who added fuel to the fire somewhat

so that Hitler then said:

"To givemean ultimatum,
that really is the end!?

One day there came one of the men
of the press bureau, press office,

and brought the news -

I think he had heard it by radio
from Reuters News Agency -

that Himmler had had negotiations

withGrafBernadotte for capitulation.

And Hitler was very upset

because he held Himmler
for his most faithful paladin

and the most reliable one,

and now he saw
that also he had tried to betray him.

He remembered suddenly that the poison
which he had to use for himself

was given to him
by one of Himmler's staff

and he mistrusted that it may affect...

Perhaps Himmler tried a dirty trick

and gave him something
that would only make him unconscious,

so that he could be transported
against his will out of the bunker

and delivered to the enemy.

And to test this he ordered a doctor

to try to test this poison capsule
on the dog.

So he said farewell to this creature.

I think it was next to Eva Braun,
this one who stood next to him.

And Blondi died very promptly.

For a tiny handful of German anti-Nazis,

the Russians came as liberators.

On Tuesday morning, the 24th,

we suddenly saw
the Gestapo had disappeared.

During the night the whole prison
was given over to normal prison guards,

old men, not nice men.

And when we saw that...

Many of the uniforms
the Gestapo guards had put away there.

We said,
"Now, when the Russians take over,

you are the men who will be killed,
not we. Let us out."

They were very...

They said, "No, we can't do that.
Tonight the Gestapo will come back."

And then in the afternoon of Tuesday
we made an agreement with them

and said,
"Look, we will put out ourselves,

we the prisoners,
some guards on the roof,

and observe the coming here
of the Russian Front."

"In the minute we hear Russian gunfire,
not only the artillery shelling,

then you will let us out.?
They said, "All right.?

When the door was opened in the prison

there was with us
a Jewish Russian doctor

who was a concentration inmate
of Sachsenhausen, the famous...

He - 1 don't know for what reason -

a month ago
was brought by the Gestapo to our prison

to do the most dirty jobs
in the prison all the time.

And we couldn't contact him much
but we knew him.

Then he stood there on the street
and, "Where to go?" as a Russian.

And I said, "Look, come with us."

"My mother-in-law will feed you.
Come in our basement."

And he went with me. When the first
units of Russians came two days later,

he met them at the door
addressing them in Russian:

"We are all anti-fascists
in this basement."

When the Russians came in in the end...

We found the first lot,
the fighting troops which came in...

They took away our watches, of course,

and they were very cautious.

We could understand that.

They took away things they liked
but they behaved very businesslike.

They stayed in this house here

and they lived in this room, three
or four of them, quite high officers.

They got up in the morning
at eight o'clock

and at nine o'clock
they went to the Tiergarten,

which isn't very far from here,

and behind the Tiergarten
is, or was, the Chancellery

where Hitler
was still alive and fighting.

They went out and did their job

and came back
at five o'clock in the afternoon sharp

and then they asked me down here
to play the piano

and give them a little tune.

And then we drank together
and we sang together.

Suddenly we saw
the first Russian soldiers.

They knocked at our door,

came in and were very kind.

They said to my mother and to me

if there were German soldiers
in the house

or asked for weapons.

And then they left.

But the next Russians
were quite different.

One of them raped me
and other inhabitants of the house.

Two women living next door were killed

and we weren't able to bury them
because the shelling was still going on.

When the Russians came along
they asked us:

"Where are your women?
We want to have your women?,

or,"Frau, Frau, Frau",they said in
German, what they called German.

I had the trick or I found the trick

to take them to these two dead bodies.

I opened the carpet and said,
"This is myFrauhere."

"I can't supply you with any women."

"These are the only two women
we knew here which we had."

And the Russians kneeled down,
some of them,

and made the cross

and said little prayers,
which was very astounding,

and got up again and kissed me
because they thought I was the widower

and gave me presents,
gave me cigarettes, gave me bread,

clapped me on my shoulder
and went off again

and got what they wanted, probably,
the next house or in the next street.

Every night,
I used to go home to see my mother

and get something to eat
and some cigarettes,

because we didn't get any food
at daytime.

And my mother
was every time, every night,

she was very lucky
to see me again, naturally.

And so my mother asked me and also
other people from our house asked me:

"Just take your uniform off,

stay here
and don't go back to fighting."

Always I said, "No, I can't do it."

I couldn't stay at home safe
and they are still fighting.

The Battle of Berlin was
one of the most difficult of the war.

It cost the Russians over 100,000 men.

Total German losses are unknown.

The storming of Berlin continued.

The encircling ring round the whole city
and round the centre of Berlin itself

was being drawn tighter and tighter.

Only a few hundred yards separated us

from the viper's nest
of Hitler's headquarters,

the Imperial Chancellery.

Then he began, "My last will",

and then he dictated me
at first his private will

and afterwards his political testimony.

And, I must confess,

that I was... I was at first
in a very excited mood,

because I expected that I would be
the first and the only one

who knows, who is going to know,

the explanation and declaration

why the war had come to this end

and why Hitler couldn't stop,

and why the development
and why the catastrophe.

I thought, "Now I will come
to the moment of the truth."

And I was heart bumping

when I wrote down what Hitler said.

But he used nothing new.

He came out with his old phrases.

He repeated his accusations,

his revenge swearing to the enemy

and to the Jewish capitalistic system.

And then he announced

in the second part
of the political testimony,

he announced a new government.

Eva Braun
had by now persuaded theFihrer

to the point where he actually wanted
to improvise a marriage service to her.

To do this, they got an official
from the propaganda ministry

who would fulfil the function
of registrar.

I joined the others
in this little workroom of Hitler's

and they were sitting there
around a table

and so I had to congratulate Eva Braun.

I was a little shy as to what to say,

and I shook hands with her

and she said, "Oh, you can say
Mrs Hitler to me now," and I did.

On the rocket,
"This is for the Reichstag."

Others said, "Remember Stalingrad?,
"Remember the Ukraine?,

"Remember the widows and children?,
"Remember the tears."

Hitler had now drawn his conclusions.

He said farewell to everybody.

I was the last one he came to.

"I have given the order to break out."

"You should break out in groups.?

"Join one of these groups
and try to get through to the west."

"For whom should we fight on for now?"

And to that Hitler said in a monotone:

"For the coming man."

I saluted him. He gave me his hand
and I disappeared out of the room.

Suddenly there was a bang,
there was a shot,

and it was obviously within the bunker,

because the noises
of the outside shooting,

we know how they sound.

And the little boy of Goebbels,

he noticed that there was another sound.

He said, "Oh, that was a bull's-eye."

And I thought, yes, you are right.
That was really a bull's-eye.

I went into Hitler's workroom

with the former Reichsleiter Bormann
and this picture presented itself to us.

Hitler was sitting
on the left of the sofa

with his face bent slightly forward
and hanging down to the right.

With the 7.65
he had shot himself in the right temple.

The blood had run down onto the carpet

and from this pool of blood
a splash had got onto the sofa.

Eva Braun was sitting on his right.

Eva Braun had drawn both her legs
up onto the sofa

and was sitting there with cramped lips

so that it immediately
became clear to us

that she had taken cyanide.

I took Hitler by his neck.

Behind me were two other officers
from his bodyguard.

And so we took Hitler's body
and proceeded with it into the park.

In the park, we laid the bodies
together next to each other

and poured
the available petrol over them.

In the Reich Chancellery park
there was fire all around.

A draught had got up

so that we could not set the corpses
alight with an ordinary match.

So I twisted a taper
out of some paper from a notebook

and Reichsleiter Bormann,
who meanwhile had also come upstairs

with others like Dr Goebbels,
Burgdorf and some officers,

lit the taper
and I threw the taper onto the bodies

and in an instant
the corpses were set alight.

That night we were the first

to take the fight
into the Chancellery itself.

Our objective was to be the planting
of our banner on the building itself.

There was a group of us.

Our group consisted of me,
Sanogen, Alimov and Uzbek,

who was the Young Communist organiser
of our battalion.

He and his Young Communists
had fought through with us together.

They protected me so that I could fight
my way in to hoist the flag.

They gave me the banner to enable me

to get into the building itself
and hoist it up.

Having got into the building,

we started making our way
up the staircase towards the attic.

Some fascists opened up on us and
Sanogen was hit in the head and fell.

His friends rushed forward to him

while I had to make it upstairs
to plant the banner.

And having made my way onto the roof
through a shell hole,

I secured our red banner
with a length of telegraph wire.

- How do you do?
- You're one of Joe Stalin's soldiers

and I'm pleased to meet you.

When the armies
of East and West met in Germany

there was a brief moment
of warmth and comradeship.

- Well, we fought the same way together.
-Yes.

Well, all the best, old man. I'm very
glad to have met you. Very glad indeed.

Thank you very much.

We don't understand the language
but we mean the same thing.

The Red Army saw themselves
as liberators, not avengers.

But the crimes of Hitler's Reich
had to be paid for,

it was the ordinary German who paid.