World War II in Colour (2009–…): Season 1, Episode 10 - Episode dated 14 January 2011 - full transcript
[theme song plays]
[background music over dialogue]
[bombs exploding]
[cannons firing]
[woman crying]
[narrator] By the summer of 1944,
Allied troops were racing
towards Paris.
The final phase of the war in Europe
was about to be played out.
The Western Allies were squeezing in
on Germany through France.
[cannon firing]
The Soviet Union
was approaching from the east.
Hitler, caught in the middle,
made a last desperate attempt
to break out of the Allied stranglehold.
While he was doing so,
Stalin was beginning to redraw
the political map of Europe
in an attempt to secure
the Soviet Union's future.
But as the Russians now advanced
into German occupied territory,
they came across the most shocking
discover in modern history.
A series of camps
that would call into question
the very nature of humanity.
The world was about to discover
the true horror of the Nazi regime.
[gunshots]
In August 1944
Allied troops arrived in Paris.
[gunshots]
Even as Hitler desperately signalled
to his generals,
"Is Paris burning?"
the German forces occupying the city
surrendered.
[reporter] Paris free again
and the beginning of the last act
in its amazing story:
the surrender
of Lieutenant General von Choltitz,
German commander
of the Paris region.
At a dingy office
in Montparnasse station
formal end of German rule.
[horn honking]
[crowd singing]
[narrator] Paris threw itself
into an orgy of celebration.
[cheers and applause]
The following day
Charles de Gaulle,
the leader of the Free French
government in exile,
arrived in the city
to claim the glory for its liberation.
[speaking French]
Meanwhile,
as De Gaulle claimed the credit,
the Allies continued the fighting.
They crossed the River Seine
and moved east towards Germany.
As they did so the German army
was retreating in confusion.
But the Allies were running
into severe logistical problems.
The fleeing Germans
had trashed the French ports.
That meant Allied supplies
had to be brought in from Britain
across the beaches of Normandy
and then transported
several hundreds of miles
along tortuous roads.
Truck convoys, nicknamed
the Red Ball Express
from their identification sign,
rolled forward day and night.
But it was impossible
to bring in enough supplies,
particularly fuel,
to maintain the Allied advance.
A US armoured division drank
up to 25,000 gallons of fuel a day.
Meanwhile, as supply problems
slowed the Allied advance,
Hitler was planning
a new fight-back.
His plan:
to destroy Allied morale
by attacking civilian targets,
particularly in Britain.
His method:
a new miracle weapon,
the flying bomb.
On 13 June 1944
ten were fired at London.
[explosions]
Six struck home.
The Germans called it
Vengeance Weapon 1, the V-1.
The British simply
called it the doodlebug.
[explosions]
Armed with a warhead
of just under 2,000 pounds,
it could be launched
from sites 130 miles away
and could fly at 400 miles an hour.
For the next few weeks
up to 100 doodlebugs a day
were fired at British cities
from launch sites along
the German-occupied Channel coast.
They caused panic and confusion.
More than 20,000 people
were killed or wounded.
[gunshots]
The British set up a screen
of anti-aircraft guns around the capital.
Many flying bombs
were shot down.
[explosions]
The British also sent up
fighters to intercept them,
including their first operational jet,
the Gloster Meteor.
[explosions]
But still the V-1s kept arriving.
Only when the Allies tracked down
their launch sites in northern France
did they stop.
But the reprieve was only temporary.
The Germans had a second
miracle weapon up their sleeves.
Hard on the heels of the V-1
came the much more sophisticated
V-2 rocket.
[explosions]
The first fell on London
on 8 September 1944.
The V-2s were launched from
easily concealed mobile launchers
200 miles away.
They travelled at 3,500 miles an hour
and carried a one ton warhead.
For six months
Britain had no response.
Over 1100 V-2s landed
on defenceless British cities.
They only stopped
when the German positions in Europe
were pushed so far back
the launch sites were
once again out of range of Britain.
Yet despite the horror and damage
the V-2s caused,
British morale remained unbroken.
[cheers and applause]
Meanwhile in mainland Europe,
the Allied advance reached Brussels
on 3 September 1944.
[cheers and applause]
The next day British forces took
the huge Belgian port of Antwerp.
It was still intact.
Here at last seemed an answer
to the Allies' logistic problems.
New supplies could pour in
through the port.
But it was not to be so simple.
Antwerp is 40 miles from the sea
up the River Scheldt.
As the Germans pulled out of the city,
they dug in along the waterway,
turning it into a corridor of death.
The river was also mined.
It meant the port was unreachable
from the sea.
The Allied advance,
now desperately low on supplies
was in danger of grinding to a halt.
By autumn 1944
the Allied advance
across Western Europe
was running short of supplies.
They needed a new plan
if it was to move forward.
It was now that the methodical
and ultra-cautious British Commander
Bernard Montgomery
came up with a bold,
even reckless, idea.
Instead of large numbers of troops
advancing across a wide front,
why not send a smaller force
to punch a single hole
through the German defences?
It would be faster
and much more economical.
The idea was drive a narrow corridor
from east of Antwerp
across southern Holland
to the Dutch town of Arnhem
near the German border.
The Allies would then push
across the Rhine into Germany,
outflanking the huge
German defensive positions
of the so called Siegfried Line,
and drive deep into the heart
of Hitler's Reich.
Montgomery's boss,
General Dwight Eisenhower,
the Supreme Allied Commander
in the West,
had until now favoured
a broad, steady advance.
But he unexpectedly agreed.
However, it was never
going to be easy.
The route went over
a mass of waterways.
Airborne troops would
have to be sent in
to seize strategic bridges
behind German lines
at the towns of Veghel and Zon,
Grave and Nijmegen,
and finally across the Rhine at Arnhem.
Their task would be to hold the bridges
while the main attack,
led by a column of tanks,
drove up from Belgium.
Timing was critical.
If the tank column took too long
the airborne troops holding the bridges
would be overwhelmed.
Operation Market Garden
began early on the afternoon
of 17 September 1944.
30,000 British and US airborne troops,
equipped with gliders,
landed in German-occupied territory.
[crowd cheering]
The US 101st Airborne,
the Screaming Eagles,
swiftly captured the bridge at Veghel.
But their second objective,
the bridge at Zon,
was blown up by the Germans
just as the Americans approached.
[explosions]
Further north the US 82nd Airborne,
the All Americans,
successfully seized
the bridge at Grave.
[gunshots and explosions]
But stiff German resistance
prevented them
from capturing the second
crucial bridge at Nijmegen.
Meanwhile at Arnhem,
two brigades of the British
First Airborne Division
landed safely
about eight miles west of the town.
But as the paratroops advanced
towards Arnhem's
vital bridge across the Rhine,
they ran into two German
Panzer divisions.
[explosions]
The British dropped reinforcements
of men and machines.
But as they drifted down to earth,
they were cut to pieces
by German fire.
[gunshots and explosions]
Finally, by eight in the evening,
after a day of fierce fighting,
an Allied battalion reached
the northern end of the bridge.
But the Germans still held
the other end.
Operation Market Garden
was in trouble.
At the same time the tank column,
advancing up a single-track road,
was also running into difficulties.
As it drove towards
the Dutch border on the first day,
the lead vehicles were ambushed
by German troops
using the lethal handheld
Panzerfaust antitank rocket.
[explosions]
The advance was halted
while infantry was brought in
to clear the way.
[explosions]
The following day
the tank column reached Zon,
but was delayed overnight
while the bridge was replaced
with a temporary structure.
[explosions]
By the third day it had crossed
the bridges at Veghel and Grave,
but was held up again
by fierce resistance at Nijmegen.
Finally, four days after starting out,
the column was at last
within striking distance of Arnhem.
But it was too late.
The British paratroops holding
the northern end of the bridge
had surrendered.
Montgomery's daring plan had failed.
Arnhem had proved a bridge too far.
The war on the Western Front
seemed to have ground
to a standstill again.
Then, ten days later,
the Allies launched a new effort
to break the deadlock.
The plan was to clear
the seaway into Antwerp
so that urgently needed supplies
could be brought in.
[gunshots]
It was slow going.
The Germans had flooded
much of the area.
It took Canadian troops
three weeks to clear the riverbanks
of German soldiers
and machine gun nests.
[gunshots]
But still the Germans clung on
to the strategically important
Walcheren Island.
It had massive guns
that commanded the river entrance.
On 1 November 1944,
British commandos were sent in
to flush the Germans out.
They were supported
by two World War I monitors
with huge 15-inch guns.
[explosions]
The Germans held on
for another week
before they were finally overwhelmed.
Allied mine sweepers
could now clear the seaway.
Three weeks later,
on 28 November 28 1944,
the first supply ships reached Antwerp.
Now at last the Allies could move on
towards the German frontier.
But then, just as the supplies
had begun to flow,
the weather changed.
[thunder]
Autumn rain turned the battlefield
into a swamp.
By late 1944
the Allied advance had to stop again.
The final defeat of Germany
would have to wait until the spring.
But even as the Allies waited,
Hitler was preparing
a massive response.
[explosions]
By autumn 1944
the Allied armies
were virtually lined up
along the Belgian-German frontier
waiting for the winter weather to clear
before they pushed on.
Germany's situation
was disastrous.
Her forces were
hugely outnumbered,
they lacked air support,
and they were
desperately short of fuel.
Nevertheless Hitler,
against the advice
of his senior commanders,
decided to launch
a huge counter attack.
It was a desperate gamble,
but if it paid off,
it might just change
Germany's fortunes.
His plan was to burst through
the Allied lines in the Ardennes hills
and head for Antwerp.
If he could retake the port,
the Allied supply lines
would be cut out once again.
Some 200,000 German troops
and 950 tanks
and tank destroyers
were assembled
in total radio silence.
Hitler was calling on
what was, in effect,
his last remaining
strategic reserve of troops.
The Allies missed
the build-up completely.
As a result, the lines
facing the German positions
were only lightly manned.
[explosions]
On 16 December 1944
the Germans opened fire.
[explosions]
Soon afterwards German tanks
and infantry crossed the US lines.
The Americans were caught
completely by surprise.
In fact during the first day
General Omar Bradley,
Commander of US 12th Army Group,
even refused to believe a major
German assault was underway.
American confusion
was made worse
when the Germans sent in
English-speaking special forces
in captured US uniforms and jeeps
to carry out sabotage
behind the US lines.
American troops became so nervous
that even General Bradley
was stopped
and asked to produce
his identity papers
to prove that he was not a German.
But despite this
the US forces regrouped.
Any Germans captured
wearing US uniforms
were summarily shot as spies.
[gunshots]
The Americans began to fight back.
But the German advance had created
a huge bulge in the Allied lines.
The attack would become known
as the Battle of the Bulge.
[explosions]
It was now,
on the northern flank of this bulge,
that the Germans committed
one of the worst atrocities of the war
in north-west Europe.
SS Colonel Joachim Peiper
captured some 150 members
of a US artillery observation battalion
near the village of Malmedy.
When, later,
US forces retook the village,
they found 85 bodies.
Their comrades had been shot
by their SS guards.
It was a sign of how desperate
the fight had become.
As the German advance
near Malmedy continued
US combat engineers
blew up bridges to slow it down.
[explosions]
The Germans were forced
to use precious supplies of fuel
to look for alternative crossings.
Meanwhile,
on the southern flank of the bulge,
US troops blocked road junctions
to slow the German tanks.
One of the most important crossroads
was at the small Belgian town
of Bastogne.
Here the Allies sent
in reinforcements.
[explosions]
The Germans were forced
to bypass it,
but the US forces holding Bastogne
blocked their supply lines.
Two days later, however,
the Germans were approaching
the town of Dinant,
some 30 miles further west.
Despite the setbacks,
Hitler's gamble appeared
to be paying off.
The German bulge was moving forward.
But their supply lines were
now dangerously overextended
and they were running
desperately low on fuel.
The advance slowed.
[explosions]
For almost a week in the biting cold
the two sides remained deadlocked.
Neither could gain the upper hand.
[explosions]
Then, on New Year's Day 1945,
the Luftwaffe launched
a do-or-die assault on Allied bases.
Over 300 Allied planes were destroyed.
But the Luftwaffe lost
several hundred too,
far more than it could replace.
[gunshots]
As the weather now improved
the Allies took advantage
of their overwhelming air power.
US troops, temporarily
under Montgomery's command,
pushed in from the north.
US General George Patton's forces
squeezed from the south.
Allied air power pummelled
the German lines.
[explosions]
The German bulge
was slowly pushed back.
[gunshots]
By early February 1945
Hitler's gamble had failed.
The Germans had retreated
to their original positions.
The attack had taken a heavy toll
on their already depleted resources.
Over 120,000 men were killed,
wounded or taken prisoner.
Meanwhile on the other side of Europe
Stalin now began to move
on Germany's eastern border.
In doing so he would begin to redraw
the political map of Europe.
[crowd cheering]
During the summer
and autumn of 1944,
as the Allies overran
France and Belgium,
in the east the core
of Stalin's Red Army
was camped outside
the Polish capital of Warsaw.
For the Russian leader
the aim of the war had now changed.
It was no longer a matter of survival
or even of pushing the enemy
out of the Soviet Union.
It had become a political affair.
Top of Stalin's agenda
was building a buffer zone between
the Soviet Army and Germany.
One of the keys to this was Poland.
The Russians and Poles
had long hated each other.
Soviet armies had collaborated
with the Germans
in carving up Poland in 1939.
[background music over dialogues]
Then, in April 1943,
German soldiers found the bodies
of over 4,000 Polish army officers
in the Katyn Woods near Smolensk
in the Soviet Union.
They had been murdered
by the Russians.
Stalin denied any involvement
and blamed the Germans.
But the Poles never believed him.
[explosions]
Then, in the summer of 1944,
the Polish Home Army in Warsaw
rose up against its German occupiers.
It was now that hostility between
the two countries came to a head.
[explosions]
The Home Army had been spurred on
by a broadcast
from Moscow on 29 July
urging a popular uprising.
[explosions]
In the first days of the rising
it seized some two thirds of the city.
It had about 40,000 men and women,
armed mainly
with captured German weapons.
There were also
more than 200,000 unarmed helpers.
But they lacked any weapons capable
of repelling the German heavy armour.
The Poles looked to the Soviet Army,
still camped just to the south,
for help.
But Stalin ordered it to do nothing
and dismissed
the Home Army's leadership
as power-seeking criminals.
[explosions]
German reinforcements
poured into Warsaw
under the command of SS General
Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski.
He was an expert in crushing
and slaughtering partisan groups.
[gunshots]
The situation in the city
became desperate.
[firing]
Savage house-to-house fighting
raged for two months.
The Home Army was forced back
into an ever smaller area.
The German advance was
accompanied by rape and murder.
Wounded prisoners were burned alive.
Women and children
were used as human shields.
The Polish forces were forced back
into cellars and sewers.
[explosions]
[background music over dialogues]
But still the Red Army sat back.
Stalin's reasoning was simple.
He saw the Polish Home Army
as pro-Western and anti-Communist.
He reasoned that if it
and its supporters were destroyed,
it would clear the way for
the Polish Communists to take power.
[explosions]
By 2 October
the Germans had done
just what Stalin had hoped.
The Home Army and its sympathisers
were crushed.
Over 15,000 army members
and 200,000 civilians died.
[background music over dialogues]
Some 15,000 people surrendered.
Hitler now set about
the complete destruction of the city.
[explosions]
Warsaw was razed to the ground.
The remnants of the Home Army
went underground.
[cheers and applause]
Later, when the Red Army
finally moved into Warsaw,
they would be hunted down
by Soviet secret police.
Stalin's scheming had worked.
Pro-Western Polish forces
had been smashed
and the country would,
after the war,
become a key buffer state
between Russia and the West.
In London the British Prime Minister,
Winston Churchill,
was appalled by Stalin's conduct.
But he was also a pragmatist.
In October 1944
Churchill went to Moscow.
It was several months after
the crushing of the Warsaw uprising.
There he agreed with Stalin
on a division of the European spoils.
According to a document
Churchill scribbled down
the Soviets would have
90% of the influence in Romania
and the British 90% in Greece.
In Bulgaria the Soviets
would have 75% influence
and 50% in Yugoslavia and Hungary.
The future of Poland was left vague,
probably deliberately.
Churchill described it
as "the naughty document".
The wording was confusing
and nobody was sure
quite what it meant
but Stalin happily agreed to it.
He was probably aware
that the winner would take all
and he intended to be the winner
in most of Eastern Europe
and the Balkans.
Churchill never told the Americans
about the document.
He knew that they would be horrified
by such old fashioned imperialism
between the European powers.
But the US found out soon enough.
In late 1944
the Germans pulled out of Greece.
The country descended
into a civil war
between the Monarchists
and the Communists.
Churchill wanted his 90% influence
and sent in British troops to support
the pro-Western Monarchists.
[gunshots]
Stalin, mindful
of the naughty document,
did not object.
But the Americans were outraged
at what they saw as blatant meddling
in another country's affairs.
[crowd yelling]
But by the end of 1944
there was a more pressing issue.
Western and Soviet forces
were about the same distance
away from Berlin.
The race was on
to be the first to get there.
But even before it began,
new and shocking news
came out of the East.
On 23 July 1944,
as Soviet forces advanced
through eastern Poland,
they overran a small village
called Maidanek.
Nearby they found a prison compound.
They quickly realised
it was no ordinary camp.
They found specially built
gas chambers and incinerators.
Near them were piles of corpses.
It was a camp designed
for the mass murder of Jews.
[speaking German]
Adolf Hitler had always been
anti-Semitic.
[cheering]
When, in the 1930s,
he had come to power,
many German Jews
had been forced to flee.
Those who couldn't were persecuted
and deprived of their rights.
Then, in the summer of 1939,
the Germans invaded Poland.
Suddenly the German Reich
found itself
ruling two million more Jews.
So the Nazis sent in
special SS squads,
the Einsatzgruppen,
whose job was to round them up.
Many Jews were immediately shot.
The remainder were herded
into walled ghettos in the major cities,
while Germans worked out
how to solve
what they called "the Jewish problem".
[crowd yelling]
Life in the ghettos was harsh.
People were systematically
starved and beaten.
[explosions]
Two years later the German army
entered the Soviet Union.
Millions more Jews suddenly
found themselves under Nazi rule.
Here the Einsatzgruppen
were helped by the local population,
which was often anti-Semitic
and only too willing
to carry out pogroms of its own.
Hundreds of thousands of Jews
were rounded up and exterminated.
[gunshots]
The most notorious pogrom
occurred at Babyi Yar in Kiev.
33,000 Jews were shot in cold blood.
But machine-gunning
was an expensive way
of dealing with the Jewish problem.
Nor was it popular
with many German soldiers.
So at a conference in January 1942
the SS leadership cast round
for more efficient solutions.
[background music over dialogues]
First it tried using
carbon monoxide fumes.
But that didn't kill enough
people quickly enough.
The conference eventually
agreed to set up a series of camps
where Europe's Jewish population
would be systematically exterminated.
There would be six
of these death camps,
all in Poland.
They were at Maidanek,
Sobibor, Treblinka,
Chelmno, Belzec, and Birkenau.
As the camps were being built,
the Jewish ghettos were liquidated.
One notorious example
was in Warsaw.
Here, as the Germans moved
into the ghetto to clear it out,
the inhabitants fought back.
They held out for nearly a month.
7,000 died in the fighting
before they were overwhelmed.
Those who had survived it
were rounded up
and sent to Treblinka.
Here they entered
what was rapidly becoming
a highly organised system
of slave labour and extermination.
New inhabitants
arrived at the camps
in cattle trucks
from all over Europe.
At places like Birkenau
the extermination facilities were
next to the work camps like Auschwitz.
At facilities like this
the new arrivals were sorted.
Able-bodied men and a few women
went to the work camp
to be worked to death as slaves.
Children, the old,
and most of the women
went straight to the gas chambers.
They were stripped
and their heads shaved.
Next they were herded,
up to 2,000 at a time,
into sealed rooms
disguised as showers.
SS officers then poured
Zyklon-B crystals
through a trap in the roof
to form a deadly gas.
It was far more effective
than carbon monoxide.
At Auschwitz-Birkenau
the gas chambers could kill
over 10,000 people a day.
Small groups of prisoners,
known as Sonderkommandos,
were used to clear the bodies
out of the chambers.
Some bodies were burned in pits,
some in crematoria.
The camps could also
be profitable businesses.
Major German companies
built factories near them
and paid the SS,
which administered the camps,
to hire Jews as slaves.
The belongings and hair
of those gassed were sold off,
their gold teeth melted down
and hoarded.
For most Jews
resistance was almost impossible.
At Treblinka, Sobibor,
and Birkenau, however,
the Sonderkommandos mounted
brief and doomed rebellions.
But in July 1944
most of this was still unknown.
As news began to seep out
of the Russian find at Maidanek,
most people simply
found it unbelievable.
Yet today we know
that people in the West, like Churchill,
almost certainly knew
more than they admitted.
During 1943 and 1944
several reports reached London
about what was going on
inside the extermination camps.
But nothing was done.
Today it is estimated
some six million Jews
were exterminated
in Hitler's camps.
What the Allies had never understood
until the war was over
was the vast scale
of the Nazi extermination campaign.
Nor did they grasp
the sheer quantity of resources
the Germans were prepared
to devote to it
when Germany was facing
its final days.
[explosions and gunshots]
[background music over dialogue]
[bombs exploding]
[cannons firing]
[woman crying]
[narrator] By the summer of 1944,
Allied troops were racing
towards Paris.
The final phase of the war in Europe
was about to be played out.
The Western Allies were squeezing in
on Germany through France.
[cannon firing]
The Soviet Union
was approaching from the east.
Hitler, caught in the middle,
made a last desperate attempt
to break out of the Allied stranglehold.
While he was doing so,
Stalin was beginning to redraw
the political map of Europe
in an attempt to secure
the Soviet Union's future.
But as the Russians now advanced
into German occupied territory,
they came across the most shocking
discover in modern history.
A series of camps
that would call into question
the very nature of humanity.
The world was about to discover
the true horror of the Nazi regime.
[gunshots]
In August 1944
Allied troops arrived in Paris.
[gunshots]
Even as Hitler desperately signalled
to his generals,
"Is Paris burning?"
the German forces occupying the city
surrendered.
[reporter] Paris free again
and the beginning of the last act
in its amazing story:
the surrender
of Lieutenant General von Choltitz,
German commander
of the Paris region.
At a dingy office
in Montparnasse station
formal end of German rule.
[horn honking]
[crowd singing]
[narrator] Paris threw itself
into an orgy of celebration.
[cheers and applause]
The following day
Charles de Gaulle,
the leader of the Free French
government in exile,
arrived in the city
to claim the glory for its liberation.
[speaking French]
Meanwhile,
as De Gaulle claimed the credit,
the Allies continued the fighting.
They crossed the River Seine
and moved east towards Germany.
As they did so the German army
was retreating in confusion.
But the Allies were running
into severe logistical problems.
The fleeing Germans
had trashed the French ports.
That meant Allied supplies
had to be brought in from Britain
across the beaches of Normandy
and then transported
several hundreds of miles
along tortuous roads.
Truck convoys, nicknamed
the Red Ball Express
from their identification sign,
rolled forward day and night.
But it was impossible
to bring in enough supplies,
particularly fuel,
to maintain the Allied advance.
A US armoured division drank
up to 25,000 gallons of fuel a day.
Meanwhile, as supply problems
slowed the Allied advance,
Hitler was planning
a new fight-back.
His plan:
to destroy Allied morale
by attacking civilian targets,
particularly in Britain.
His method:
a new miracle weapon,
the flying bomb.
On 13 June 1944
ten were fired at London.
[explosions]
Six struck home.
The Germans called it
Vengeance Weapon 1, the V-1.
The British simply
called it the doodlebug.
[explosions]
Armed with a warhead
of just under 2,000 pounds,
it could be launched
from sites 130 miles away
and could fly at 400 miles an hour.
For the next few weeks
up to 100 doodlebugs a day
were fired at British cities
from launch sites along
the German-occupied Channel coast.
They caused panic and confusion.
More than 20,000 people
were killed or wounded.
[gunshots]
The British set up a screen
of anti-aircraft guns around the capital.
Many flying bombs
were shot down.
[explosions]
The British also sent up
fighters to intercept them,
including their first operational jet,
the Gloster Meteor.
[explosions]
But still the V-1s kept arriving.
Only when the Allies tracked down
their launch sites in northern France
did they stop.
But the reprieve was only temporary.
The Germans had a second
miracle weapon up their sleeves.
Hard on the heels of the V-1
came the much more sophisticated
V-2 rocket.
[explosions]
The first fell on London
on 8 September 1944.
The V-2s were launched from
easily concealed mobile launchers
200 miles away.
They travelled at 3,500 miles an hour
and carried a one ton warhead.
For six months
Britain had no response.
Over 1100 V-2s landed
on defenceless British cities.
They only stopped
when the German positions in Europe
were pushed so far back
the launch sites were
once again out of range of Britain.
Yet despite the horror and damage
the V-2s caused,
British morale remained unbroken.
[cheers and applause]
Meanwhile in mainland Europe,
the Allied advance reached Brussels
on 3 September 1944.
[cheers and applause]
The next day British forces took
the huge Belgian port of Antwerp.
It was still intact.
Here at last seemed an answer
to the Allies' logistic problems.
New supplies could pour in
through the port.
But it was not to be so simple.
Antwerp is 40 miles from the sea
up the River Scheldt.
As the Germans pulled out of the city,
they dug in along the waterway,
turning it into a corridor of death.
The river was also mined.
It meant the port was unreachable
from the sea.
The Allied advance,
now desperately low on supplies
was in danger of grinding to a halt.
By autumn 1944
the Allied advance
across Western Europe
was running short of supplies.
They needed a new plan
if it was to move forward.
It was now that the methodical
and ultra-cautious British Commander
Bernard Montgomery
came up with a bold,
even reckless, idea.
Instead of large numbers of troops
advancing across a wide front,
why not send a smaller force
to punch a single hole
through the German defences?
It would be faster
and much more economical.
The idea was drive a narrow corridor
from east of Antwerp
across southern Holland
to the Dutch town of Arnhem
near the German border.
The Allies would then push
across the Rhine into Germany,
outflanking the huge
German defensive positions
of the so called Siegfried Line,
and drive deep into the heart
of Hitler's Reich.
Montgomery's boss,
General Dwight Eisenhower,
the Supreme Allied Commander
in the West,
had until now favoured
a broad, steady advance.
But he unexpectedly agreed.
However, it was never
going to be easy.
The route went over
a mass of waterways.
Airborne troops would
have to be sent in
to seize strategic bridges
behind German lines
at the towns of Veghel and Zon,
Grave and Nijmegen,
and finally across the Rhine at Arnhem.
Their task would be to hold the bridges
while the main attack,
led by a column of tanks,
drove up from Belgium.
Timing was critical.
If the tank column took too long
the airborne troops holding the bridges
would be overwhelmed.
Operation Market Garden
began early on the afternoon
of 17 September 1944.
30,000 British and US airborne troops,
equipped with gliders,
landed in German-occupied territory.
[crowd cheering]
The US 101st Airborne,
the Screaming Eagles,
swiftly captured the bridge at Veghel.
But their second objective,
the bridge at Zon,
was blown up by the Germans
just as the Americans approached.
[explosions]
Further north the US 82nd Airborne,
the All Americans,
successfully seized
the bridge at Grave.
[gunshots and explosions]
But stiff German resistance
prevented them
from capturing the second
crucial bridge at Nijmegen.
Meanwhile at Arnhem,
two brigades of the British
First Airborne Division
landed safely
about eight miles west of the town.
But as the paratroops advanced
towards Arnhem's
vital bridge across the Rhine,
they ran into two German
Panzer divisions.
[explosions]
The British dropped reinforcements
of men and machines.
But as they drifted down to earth,
they were cut to pieces
by German fire.
[gunshots and explosions]
Finally, by eight in the evening,
after a day of fierce fighting,
an Allied battalion reached
the northern end of the bridge.
But the Germans still held
the other end.
Operation Market Garden
was in trouble.
At the same time the tank column,
advancing up a single-track road,
was also running into difficulties.
As it drove towards
the Dutch border on the first day,
the lead vehicles were ambushed
by German troops
using the lethal handheld
Panzerfaust antitank rocket.
[explosions]
The advance was halted
while infantry was brought in
to clear the way.
[explosions]
The following day
the tank column reached Zon,
but was delayed overnight
while the bridge was replaced
with a temporary structure.
[explosions]
By the third day it had crossed
the bridges at Veghel and Grave,
but was held up again
by fierce resistance at Nijmegen.
Finally, four days after starting out,
the column was at last
within striking distance of Arnhem.
But it was too late.
The British paratroops holding
the northern end of the bridge
had surrendered.
Montgomery's daring plan had failed.
Arnhem had proved a bridge too far.
The war on the Western Front
seemed to have ground
to a standstill again.
Then, ten days later,
the Allies launched a new effort
to break the deadlock.
The plan was to clear
the seaway into Antwerp
so that urgently needed supplies
could be brought in.
[gunshots]
It was slow going.
The Germans had flooded
much of the area.
It took Canadian troops
three weeks to clear the riverbanks
of German soldiers
and machine gun nests.
[gunshots]
But still the Germans clung on
to the strategically important
Walcheren Island.
It had massive guns
that commanded the river entrance.
On 1 November 1944,
British commandos were sent in
to flush the Germans out.
They were supported
by two World War I monitors
with huge 15-inch guns.
[explosions]
The Germans held on
for another week
before they were finally overwhelmed.
Allied mine sweepers
could now clear the seaway.
Three weeks later,
on 28 November 28 1944,
the first supply ships reached Antwerp.
Now at last the Allies could move on
towards the German frontier.
But then, just as the supplies
had begun to flow,
the weather changed.
[thunder]
Autumn rain turned the battlefield
into a swamp.
By late 1944
the Allied advance had to stop again.
The final defeat of Germany
would have to wait until the spring.
But even as the Allies waited,
Hitler was preparing
a massive response.
[explosions]
By autumn 1944
the Allied armies
were virtually lined up
along the Belgian-German frontier
waiting for the winter weather to clear
before they pushed on.
Germany's situation
was disastrous.
Her forces were
hugely outnumbered,
they lacked air support,
and they were
desperately short of fuel.
Nevertheless Hitler,
against the advice
of his senior commanders,
decided to launch
a huge counter attack.
It was a desperate gamble,
but if it paid off,
it might just change
Germany's fortunes.
His plan was to burst through
the Allied lines in the Ardennes hills
and head for Antwerp.
If he could retake the port,
the Allied supply lines
would be cut out once again.
Some 200,000 German troops
and 950 tanks
and tank destroyers
were assembled
in total radio silence.
Hitler was calling on
what was, in effect,
his last remaining
strategic reserve of troops.
The Allies missed
the build-up completely.
As a result, the lines
facing the German positions
were only lightly manned.
[explosions]
On 16 December 1944
the Germans opened fire.
[explosions]
Soon afterwards German tanks
and infantry crossed the US lines.
The Americans were caught
completely by surprise.
In fact during the first day
General Omar Bradley,
Commander of US 12th Army Group,
even refused to believe a major
German assault was underway.
American confusion
was made worse
when the Germans sent in
English-speaking special forces
in captured US uniforms and jeeps
to carry out sabotage
behind the US lines.
American troops became so nervous
that even General Bradley
was stopped
and asked to produce
his identity papers
to prove that he was not a German.
But despite this
the US forces regrouped.
Any Germans captured
wearing US uniforms
were summarily shot as spies.
[gunshots]
The Americans began to fight back.
But the German advance had created
a huge bulge in the Allied lines.
The attack would become known
as the Battle of the Bulge.
[explosions]
It was now,
on the northern flank of this bulge,
that the Germans committed
one of the worst atrocities of the war
in north-west Europe.
SS Colonel Joachim Peiper
captured some 150 members
of a US artillery observation battalion
near the village of Malmedy.
When, later,
US forces retook the village,
they found 85 bodies.
Their comrades had been shot
by their SS guards.
It was a sign of how desperate
the fight had become.
As the German advance
near Malmedy continued
US combat engineers
blew up bridges to slow it down.
[explosions]
The Germans were forced
to use precious supplies of fuel
to look for alternative crossings.
Meanwhile,
on the southern flank of the bulge,
US troops blocked road junctions
to slow the German tanks.
One of the most important crossroads
was at the small Belgian town
of Bastogne.
Here the Allies sent
in reinforcements.
[explosions]
The Germans were forced
to bypass it,
but the US forces holding Bastogne
blocked their supply lines.
Two days later, however,
the Germans were approaching
the town of Dinant,
some 30 miles further west.
Despite the setbacks,
Hitler's gamble appeared
to be paying off.
The German bulge was moving forward.
But their supply lines were
now dangerously overextended
and they were running
desperately low on fuel.
The advance slowed.
[explosions]
For almost a week in the biting cold
the two sides remained deadlocked.
Neither could gain the upper hand.
[explosions]
Then, on New Year's Day 1945,
the Luftwaffe launched
a do-or-die assault on Allied bases.
Over 300 Allied planes were destroyed.
But the Luftwaffe lost
several hundred too,
far more than it could replace.
[gunshots]
As the weather now improved
the Allies took advantage
of their overwhelming air power.
US troops, temporarily
under Montgomery's command,
pushed in from the north.
US General George Patton's forces
squeezed from the south.
Allied air power pummelled
the German lines.
[explosions]
The German bulge
was slowly pushed back.
[gunshots]
By early February 1945
Hitler's gamble had failed.
The Germans had retreated
to their original positions.
The attack had taken a heavy toll
on their already depleted resources.
Over 120,000 men were killed,
wounded or taken prisoner.
Meanwhile on the other side of Europe
Stalin now began to move
on Germany's eastern border.
In doing so he would begin to redraw
the political map of Europe.
[crowd cheering]
During the summer
and autumn of 1944,
as the Allies overran
France and Belgium,
in the east the core
of Stalin's Red Army
was camped outside
the Polish capital of Warsaw.
For the Russian leader
the aim of the war had now changed.
It was no longer a matter of survival
or even of pushing the enemy
out of the Soviet Union.
It had become a political affair.
Top of Stalin's agenda
was building a buffer zone between
the Soviet Army and Germany.
One of the keys to this was Poland.
The Russians and Poles
had long hated each other.
Soviet armies had collaborated
with the Germans
in carving up Poland in 1939.
[background music over dialogues]
Then, in April 1943,
German soldiers found the bodies
of over 4,000 Polish army officers
in the Katyn Woods near Smolensk
in the Soviet Union.
They had been murdered
by the Russians.
Stalin denied any involvement
and blamed the Germans.
But the Poles never believed him.
[explosions]
Then, in the summer of 1944,
the Polish Home Army in Warsaw
rose up against its German occupiers.
It was now that hostility between
the two countries came to a head.
[explosions]
The Home Army had been spurred on
by a broadcast
from Moscow on 29 July
urging a popular uprising.
[explosions]
In the first days of the rising
it seized some two thirds of the city.
It had about 40,000 men and women,
armed mainly
with captured German weapons.
There were also
more than 200,000 unarmed helpers.
But they lacked any weapons capable
of repelling the German heavy armour.
The Poles looked to the Soviet Army,
still camped just to the south,
for help.
But Stalin ordered it to do nothing
and dismissed
the Home Army's leadership
as power-seeking criminals.
[explosions]
German reinforcements
poured into Warsaw
under the command of SS General
Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski.
He was an expert in crushing
and slaughtering partisan groups.
[gunshots]
The situation in the city
became desperate.
[firing]
Savage house-to-house fighting
raged for two months.
The Home Army was forced back
into an ever smaller area.
The German advance was
accompanied by rape and murder.
Wounded prisoners were burned alive.
Women and children
were used as human shields.
The Polish forces were forced back
into cellars and sewers.
[explosions]
[background music over dialogues]
But still the Red Army sat back.
Stalin's reasoning was simple.
He saw the Polish Home Army
as pro-Western and anti-Communist.
He reasoned that if it
and its supporters were destroyed,
it would clear the way for
the Polish Communists to take power.
[explosions]
By 2 October
the Germans had done
just what Stalin had hoped.
The Home Army and its sympathisers
were crushed.
Over 15,000 army members
and 200,000 civilians died.
[background music over dialogues]
Some 15,000 people surrendered.
Hitler now set about
the complete destruction of the city.
[explosions]
Warsaw was razed to the ground.
The remnants of the Home Army
went underground.
[cheers and applause]
Later, when the Red Army
finally moved into Warsaw,
they would be hunted down
by Soviet secret police.
Stalin's scheming had worked.
Pro-Western Polish forces
had been smashed
and the country would,
after the war,
become a key buffer state
between Russia and the West.
In London the British Prime Minister,
Winston Churchill,
was appalled by Stalin's conduct.
But he was also a pragmatist.
In October 1944
Churchill went to Moscow.
It was several months after
the crushing of the Warsaw uprising.
There he agreed with Stalin
on a division of the European spoils.
According to a document
Churchill scribbled down
the Soviets would have
90% of the influence in Romania
and the British 90% in Greece.
In Bulgaria the Soviets
would have 75% influence
and 50% in Yugoslavia and Hungary.
The future of Poland was left vague,
probably deliberately.
Churchill described it
as "the naughty document".
The wording was confusing
and nobody was sure
quite what it meant
but Stalin happily agreed to it.
He was probably aware
that the winner would take all
and he intended to be the winner
in most of Eastern Europe
and the Balkans.
Churchill never told the Americans
about the document.
He knew that they would be horrified
by such old fashioned imperialism
between the European powers.
But the US found out soon enough.
In late 1944
the Germans pulled out of Greece.
The country descended
into a civil war
between the Monarchists
and the Communists.
Churchill wanted his 90% influence
and sent in British troops to support
the pro-Western Monarchists.
[gunshots]
Stalin, mindful
of the naughty document,
did not object.
But the Americans were outraged
at what they saw as blatant meddling
in another country's affairs.
[crowd yelling]
But by the end of 1944
there was a more pressing issue.
Western and Soviet forces
were about the same distance
away from Berlin.
The race was on
to be the first to get there.
But even before it began,
new and shocking news
came out of the East.
On 23 July 1944,
as Soviet forces advanced
through eastern Poland,
they overran a small village
called Maidanek.
Nearby they found a prison compound.
They quickly realised
it was no ordinary camp.
They found specially built
gas chambers and incinerators.
Near them were piles of corpses.
It was a camp designed
for the mass murder of Jews.
[speaking German]
Adolf Hitler had always been
anti-Semitic.
[cheering]
When, in the 1930s,
he had come to power,
many German Jews
had been forced to flee.
Those who couldn't were persecuted
and deprived of their rights.
Then, in the summer of 1939,
the Germans invaded Poland.
Suddenly the German Reich
found itself
ruling two million more Jews.
So the Nazis sent in
special SS squads,
the Einsatzgruppen,
whose job was to round them up.
Many Jews were immediately shot.
The remainder were herded
into walled ghettos in the major cities,
while Germans worked out
how to solve
what they called "the Jewish problem".
[crowd yelling]
Life in the ghettos was harsh.
People were systematically
starved and beaten.
[explosions]
Two years later the German army
entered the Soviet Union.
Millions more Jews suddenly
found themselves under Nazi rule.
Here the Einsatzgruppen
were helped by the local population,
which was often anti-Semitic
and only too willing
to carry out pogroms of its own.
Hundreds of thousands of Jews
were rounded up and exterminated.
[gunshots]
The most notorious pogrom
occurred at Babyi Yar in Kiev.
33,000 Jews were shot in cold blood.
But machine-gunning
was an expensive way
of dealing with the Jewish problem.
Nor was it popular
with many German soldiers.
So at a conference in January 1942
the SS leadership cast round
for more efficient solutions.
[background music over dialogues]
First it tried using
carbon monoxide fumes.
But that didn't kill enough
people quickly enough.
The conference eventually
agreed to set up a series of camps
where Europe's Jewish population
would be systematically exterminated.
There would be six
of these death camps,
all in Poland.
They were at Maidanek,
Sobibor, Treblinka,
Chelmno, Belzec, and Birkenau.
As the camps were being built,
the Jewish ghettos were liquidated.
One notorious example
was in Warsaw.
Here, as the Germans moved
into the ghetto to clear it out,
the inhabitants fought back.
They held out for nearly a month.
7,000 died in the fighting
before they were overwhelmed.
Those who had survived it
were rounded up
and sent to Treblinka.
Here they entered
what was rapidly becoming
a highly organised system
of slave labour and extermination.
New inhabitants
arrived at the camps
in cattle trucks
from all over Europe.
At places like Birkenau
the extermination facilities were
next to the work camps like Auschwitz.
At facilities like this
the new arrivals were sorted.
Able-bodied men and a few women
went to the work camp
to be worked to death as slaves.
Children, the old,
and most of the women
went straight to the gas chambers.
They were stripped
and their heads shaved.
Next they were herded,
up to 2,000 at a time,
into sealed rooms
disguised as showers.
SS officers then poured
Zyklon-B crystals
through a trap in the roof
to form a deadly gas.
It was far more effective
than carbon monoxide.
At Auschwitz-Birkenau
the gas chambers could kill
over 10,000 people a day.
Small groups of prisoners,
known as Sonderkommandos,
were used to clear the bodies
out of the chambers.
Some bodies were burned in pits,
some in crematoria.
The camps could also
be profitable businesses.
Major German companies
built factories near them
and paid the SS,
which administered the camps,
to hire Jews as slaves.
The belongings and hair
of those gassed were sold off,
their gold teeth melted down
and hoarded.
For most Jews
resistance was almost impossible.
At Treblinka, Sobibor,
and Birkenau, however,
the Sonderkommandos mounted
brief and doomed rebellions.
But in July 1944
most of this was still unknown.
As news began to seep out
of the Russian find at Maidanek,
most people simply
found it unbelievable.
Yet today we know
that people in the West, like Churchill,
almost certainly knew
more than they admitted.
During 1943 and 1944
several reports reached London
about what was going on
inside the extermination camps.
But nothing was done.
Today it is estimated
some six million Jews
were exterminated
in Hitler's camps.
What the Allies had never understood
until the war was over
was the vast scale
of the Nazi extermination campaign.
Nor did they grasp
the sheer quantity of resources
the Germans were prepared
to devote to it
when Germany was facing
its final days.
[explosions and gunshots]