Original subtitles

[tanker engine roaring]

[canon banging]

[narrator] April, 1945...

[canon banging]

...the Soviets launched the greatest artillery barrage in history...

[rockets blaring]

...as they blast their way towards Berlin.

[bomb blasting]

Cameras followed the steps

of over a million Red Army troops,

thousands of tanks...

[canons banging]

...and a wall of heavy guns.

[canon blasting]

As the Germans draft in the young and the old

in a desperate defense of the capital of the Third Reich.

[tense music]

This is one of the bloodiest battles in World War II.

[guns banging]

Rare footage, newly colorized,

goes inside the crumbling Nazi empire.

[guns firing]

And onto the frontlines of the firefight

for the streets of Berlin.

[guns firing]

One that will determine the fate of Europe

and the future course of history.

[theme music playing]

[gentle music]

It's June 3rd, 1944.

Gretl Braun, the sister of Adolf Hitler's mistress,

Eva Braun,

celebrates her wedding to SS General Hermann Fegelein.

The reception is in the Eagle's Nest above the Berghof,

Hitler's alpine retreat.

Here, Gretl is greeted by her sister Eva.

Hitler is the guest of honor.

It's his last stay in Berchtesgaden.

Three days later, the Allies land at Normandy.

He returns to Berlin to reverse the tide of war.

Hitler's priority is in the East.

In August 1944, the Soviet army

has reached the gates of the Nazi occupied

Polish capital, Warsaw.

[bomb blasting]

The Polish Resistance's Home Army

lead a revolt against their German occupiers.

Polish Resistance cameraman, Stefan Baginksi,

shoots over his comrades shoulders

during the Warsaw Uprising.

[tense music]

It is the largest military operation

by a resistance force in World War II.

The Poles hope their Allies,

the Soviets will aid the uprising.

So Bagiski highlights their fighting spirit.

17-year old Wanda Traczyk Stawska,

wearing a pilot's outfit volunteers.

And learns how to use a sub-machine gun.

[canon bangs]

In intense street fighting,

the Home Army regains control of most of the central city.

[canon bangs]

Baginski films as they round up German POWs.

Patriotic elation briefly floods the streets

as they destroy Nazi symbols.

But Hitler is determined to keep control of the city

and halt the Soviets advance on Germany.

He sends in reinforcements.

[jets engine roaring]

Unfortunately for the Polish fighters of the Warsaw Rising,

the Red Army refuses to come to their aid.

[Robert] Stalin has no interest whatsoever

in seeing the Poles liberate themselves.

He wants to do it with his army

and thus, be in a position to dictate

what sort of government Poland has in the post-war era.

[plane engine roaring]

[narrator] The Germans recapture the city

district by district.

They kill 200,000 civilians in reprisal.

Again, Baginski is there to film the carnage,

before escaping to survive the war.

By October 2nd, the uprising has failed.

It's a lesson to the world that Germany isn't beaten yet.

The Nazis destroy nearly 90% of the city in retaliation.

[canon bangs]

[tanker tracks rattling]

Eventually, on January 14th, 1945

the Red Army makes its move.

They force the Germans out of the Polish capital

in just three days.

Warsaw's survivors greet their new occupiers.

By the end of January, the Soviets control Poland.

Now they can move on towards Germany.

[gentle music]

On February 4th, news cameras set the scene

at the Crimean seaside resort of Yalta.

Long disputed, the Crimea is now Soviet turf,

taken from the Germans the previous spring.

Their propaganda crews film at the airport

as the Kremlin Guard form a Guard of Honor

for President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.

[tense music]

They're meeting with Stalin at the beautiful Livadia Palace

once the summer home of Czar Nicholas II.

Churchill arrives suitably dressed

in a fur hat for the occasion.

But Roosevelt looks haggard.

The aim of the Big Three

is to plan for the final defeat of Nazi Germany

and the reorganization of Europe.

The plan is to divide post-war Germany into four occupied zones,

administered by American, British, French, and Soviet forces.

As will the capital, Berlin.

It's an agreement that sows the seeds of further conflict

between the Soviets and the West.

[Robert] Stalin gets his control of Eastern Europe

confirmed at Yalta.

Now for Churchill, who sees this entire war

as being fought over the liberation of Poland,

this is a bitter pill indeed.

But there's very little the Western Allies can do

about Stalin at this point.

[narrator] The Western Allies

want to keep Soviet ambitions in check.

Two days after Yalta,

they show Stalin their full destructive capability.

This amateur colored footage of Dresden in eastern Germany

is shot four years earlier

when a 20-year old Goetz Hirt-Reger is on vacation.

[gentle music]

It is the only known color footage of the city

known as the "jewel box"

before it is completely destroyed by Allied bombs.

[tense music]

The raids start at night, on February 13th, 1945.

[bombs blasting]

RAF cameraman, Robert Buckland

films from on board a Lancaster bomber.

[tense music]

From the air, 39,000 tons of explosives

glitter like exploding stars creating a firestorm.

Eight square miles of the city are left in ruins.

At least 25,000 people die in the firestorm.

Many were refugees from the East

fleeing the advancing Red Army.

[somber music]

[Matthias] When the Western Allies bomb Dresden,

they don't only do it to inflict casualties on the Germans,

they also do it to impress Stalin.

It's a show of force to Stalin,

to show the military might of the Western Allies.

[narrator] The Soviets have reached the River Oder.

It's Germany's Eastern border

and last natural barrier before Berlin.

Its defense is vital for the survival of the Nazi regime.

Hitler decides that most of his fresh troops

must be sent to reinforce the river defenses.

The troops are still more than willing to fight

for their Fuhrer.

[canon banging]

But their number are thinning.

Boys in home-made camouflage

now fill out the German infantry.

[Robert] These are young guys.

They're wearing non-standard kit.

It looks like someone raided a supply depot

and put whatever uniforms they could find on them.

There are weapons of different calibers and make,

foreign-manufactured captured weapons.

There's an unserious look in their eyes.

[narrator] Crushing pressure weighs on Nazi Germany

from both sides.

In the West, the Rhine is Germany's mightiest river

and a symbol of German National pride.

[tense music]

But in March, 1945,

the British use Buffalo amphibious vehicles

to prove that even a thousand foot wide waterway

is no obstacle.

[tense music]

The supreme Allied Commander,

US general Dwight D. Eisenhower

orders an invasion of western Germany on a broad front.

While the Soviet armies are at the River Oder in the East,

the British army will attack

the northern German city of Hamburg

and cut off German troops in Denmark.

The U.S. 9th and 1st Army forces

will surround Army Group B in the Ruhr Valley,

the German industrial heartland.

The U.S. 6th and 7th army head toward Bavaria,

birthplace of Nazism.

On March 28th, Eisenhower sends Stalin his plan

confirming that Berlin is no longer an important target

for the Western Allies.

[somber music]

Eisenhower's most controversial decision of the war

was to let the Soviets take Berlin

and not try to take it from the west with his own forces.

But he had said all along,

he wasn't going to risk lives for it,

and he stuck to that decision throughout.

[bombs blasting]

[narrator] Stalin has no such concerns.

The moment he receives Eisenhower's cable,

he orders Marshal Georgy Zhukov and Marshal Ivan Konev

to advance on the German capital with all speed

and whatever cost.

[tense music]

He wants the capture of Berlin

to become a global symbol of Soviet success.

[taker engine roaring]

[Robert] Of course, Berlin is a massive prestige target.

In modern war, taking capitals is what it's all about,

and Berlin is the grand-daddy of them all.

[canon bangs]

[bright music]

[narrator] April 12th, newsreels show America in mourning.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt has died suddenly

from a cerebral hemorrhage.

[somber music]

In Berlin, the Nazis are ecstatic.

The propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels tells Hitler:

[Joseph] Mine Fuehrer, I congratulate you!

Roosevelt is dead.

It is written in the stars that the second half of April

will be the turning point for us.

[tense music]

Hitler really thinks the Allies are going to lose all cohesion.

He thinks that Churchill,

the anti-Communist, and Stalin the Communist

are gonna be at each other throats.

Hitler thinks that because he is a dictator

with a cult of personality,

that every leader is a dictator with a cult of personality,

and that without Roosevelt, the great war leader,

America is going to go to pieces.

[guns firing]

[tense music]

[narrator] But it's the Soviets,

not the Americans who threaten Berlin.

In April 1945, 2.5 million Red Army soldiers

camp on the bank of the Oder.

They are loading captured German rocket firing mortars.

The Seelow Heights overlook flat ground

bordering the River Oder.

They are called the Gates of Berlin,

and are the last major defensive line

the Germans hold east of the capital.

To speed up his campaign,

Stalin splits the command of the Berlin operation

between Marshall Zukhov in the north

and Marshall Konev, pictured here in the middle,

in the south.

[canons banging]

Their mission is to cross the river,

advance on Berlin as quickly as possible.

And then punch their way to the center.

[Lynette] Stalin is very careful to take two generals

and allow them, in fact force them

to race each other to Berlin.

Zhukov and Konev both want to be the ones

who win the great patriotic war

and neither one is willing to let the other guy be first.

[narrator] Zhukov remembers.

[Gregory] The closer the end of the war came,

the more Stalin played games with his Marshals,

often making them go head to head

sowing differences or creating jealousy,

pushing people to seek glory on unhealthy basis.

[canons banging]

[narrator] On April 16, Zhukov's one million strong army

launches one of the most powerful

artillery barrages in history, firing across the Oder.

[rockets blaring]

Howitzers and Katyusha rockets blast a path

so the tanks can storm forward.

[rockets blaring]

1 million shells thunder down on German positions.

They create tremors felt 60 miles away in Berlin.

[canon banging]

[Hansen] This infernal hellish storm

continued with daybreak.

[bombs blasting]

[narrator] The bombardment is supposed to crush

any German resistance on the plains

in front of the Seelow Heights.

But acting on intelligence,

the Germans withdraw into the Heights themselves,

out of range of Soviet fire.

Where they prepare to stop the Red Army advance.

Sensing opportunity, Zhukov has let the cameras

into his Command Post, overlooking the battlefield.

Now with the battle in the balance,

he takes a decisive stance and radically changes tactics.

[canons banging]

He orders his tanks to scale the Seelow Heights.

[Matthias] The terrain at the Seelow Heights

is not suitable for large tank operations.

First of all, the entire area

is churned up by the Soviet artillery bombardment...

and secondly, there is only a very limited number of roads

that the Soviet tanks can use.

And that channels their attack,

and that makes it possible for the German anti-tank gunners

to shoot these tanks as they roll towards the German positions.

[canons banging]

[narrator] 80,000 German soldiers fight back bitterly.

[guns blaring]

The fight is personal.

Four years earlier, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union

and committed atrocities,

like the hanging of Soviet POWs,

declaring they are beasts.

[gun blaring]

Both side have seen propaganda images like these.

They also know that they will be revenged.

[canons banging]

German troops also hear how the advancing Red Army soldiers

mass-raped German women

when they invaded East Prussia in October 1944.

Now, they defend their homeland fanatically.

[canons banging]

It takes three days for Zhukov's forces and tanks

to advance across the bloody battlefield,

and breach the German defenses.

[tense music]

It is a brutal victory.

A German soldier crushed under one of his own Panzers

is a grim symbol for the impending death of Nazi Germany.

But Soviet losses are even heavier,

over 30,000 to 12,000 Germans.

[somber music]

Zhukov's rival, Marshall Konev, has his own challenges.

He still needs to cross the river Niesse,

to the south of Berlin.

[canons banging]

Artillery and aerial bombing keep the Germans occupied,

while the advance wave cross the river in assault boats.

[tense music]

By midday, they have bridges up and open

and the T-34 tanks are rolling towards Berlin.

These mass-produced Soviet tanks

have greater mobility and better armor

than the German Panzer IV.

An umbrella of Ilyushin II Shturmovk,

ground attack aircraft,

help Konev's men overwhelm the defending Panzer division.

[canons banging]

Meanwhile in the west, the Americans are also advancing.

They capture more than 300,000 Germans.

Hollywood director, George Stevens,

who is part of the US Army Signal Corps,

films this unique color footage of German POWs.

There are so many,

the Americans have difficulty processing them

and so have to hold them in huge field-camps.

Military Police search the German troops

and confiscate any weapons or trophies

the Germans may have looted.

[Robert] The George Stevens footage of the German prisoners of war

gives a perfect snapshot of the Wehrmacht in 1945.

They're young, they're old,

they're dressed out in non-standard kit,

they're demoralized.

Anyone who thinks the Germans

have some special genius for war,

or some special form of valor,

needs to take a look at this footage, they're human beings.

[somber music]

[canons banging]

[narrator] Red Army troops storm the suburbs of Berlin.

They are one step closer to reaching the heart

of the Third Reich.

They pick their way toward a ruined city.

Two years of Allied bombing

have destroyed 50% of Central Berlin.

And sent civilians scrambling.

[somber music]

But the city's 3.5 million residents are not evacuated.

[canon banging]

And there is no food.

[canons banging]

Still the Nazis refuse to accept defeat.

And set up makeshift defenses in the rubble.

As the Red Army approaches,

desperate German graffiti states, "Berlin stays German."

Hitler's subordinates are entirely divorced

from the reality on the ground

because Hitler is divorced from the reality on the ground.

Hitler does not comprehend that two Soviet army groups

are smashing into the center of Berlin.

[narrator] Civilians of all ages

are digging anti-tank trenches around the city

and putting up gun positions.

[somber music]

In an act of desperation, 30,0000 civilians

are enrolled in the Volksturm,

German for People's Army.

Many are old or in the Hitler Youth.

They attend a rally to swear

their loyalty to the Nazi cause.

[speaking in German]

Adolf Hitler.

[crowd] Adolf Hitler.

[narrator] Once they have enlisted

the Volksturm learn how to operate a panzerfaust...

[gun bangs]

...a single shot rocket-propelled anti-tank gun.

Even women who until now

the Nazis spared from military service

are taught how to operate one.

[bomb blasting]

[speaking in German]

Propaganda Chief Josef Goebbels tells this hodgebodge army

that no man should surrender.

[speaking in German]

But there are signs that his rhetoric

is finally losing it's grip.

Senior Party Members begin to flee the city.

[tense music]

In the rubble of the city center,

Hitler is holding out in the Reichschancellery,

his underground bunker.

His very last appearance above ground

takes place on his 56th Birthday on April 20th.

He awards medals to a detachment of Hitler Youth,

boys no older than 14.

Just as he did in March when this footage was shot.

He keeps his left hand carefully hidden behind his back,

it is shaking uncontrollably.

[Lynette] Hitler clearly shows symptoms

of what could be Parkinson's Disease,

but Hitler is on a constant diet of amphetamines.

Hitler is so gacked up on whoop chicken,

you can't tell whether the shaking in his left hand

and the paralysis in his left leg are Parkinson's Disease

or just the effects of all those drugs.

[somber music]

[narrator] While Hitler and many of the remaining

high-ranking Nazis withdraw to the bunker

to celebrate his birthday,

the Soviets begin another round

of shelling Central Berlin.

[canon bangs]

But Hitler refuses to leave.

[canon bangs]

He still has a loyal army fighting outside Berlin.

[guns blaring]

He orders them to relieve the city.

80,000 German troops regroup in the dense forests

near the small town of Halbe, south of the capital.

Only to find themselves surrounded

by a quarter of a Million Russians under Konev's command.

The Red Army attacks with its superior numbers

of tanks, artillery, and bombers.

It rapidly decimates Hitler's ill equipped

and tired relief army.

[canon bangs]

As civilians try to flee the carnage,

thousands are massacred by Soviet fire.

The forest itself becomes a death trap.

[bomb blasts]

[Robert] And now there's evidence that the Soviets

actually fired at the trees,

every single shell splinters the trees

and causes multiple casualties

to German soldiers and civilians alike.

It's a bloodbath.

[tense music]

[narrator] Over 50,000 soldiers and local people die at Halbe.

Most are German.

The Nazis desperate last stand has failed.

[canon bangs]

In Berlin, 60,000 Nazis prepare to fight to the death.

[guns blaring]

Once-fashionable apartments, are now machine gun nests.

The attacking Red Army are forced

to fight street by street.

Against the Reichs most fanatical troops.

[machine gun blaring]

The Soviet tanks enter Berlin,

one declares death to fascism.

The Volksturm and Hitler Youth

are finally able to put their Panzerfaust training

to good use.

[bomb blasting]

There's no shortage of targets.

Thin side armor makes the T34s particularly vulnerable.

[Matthias] The German Panzerfaust

is an extremely formidable weapon.

It can destroy any enemy tank on the battlefield.

And it has a huge effect

during the Battle of Berlin as well,

because the Germans can crawl up in the urban environment

to the Soviet tanks, and knock them out at very close range.

And as a consequence of this,

the Soviets lose a high number of tanks

during the Battle of Berlin.

[bomb blasting]

[narrator] Nevertheless, the Germans continue

to find themselves outgunned

and outnumbered by the Red Army.

[tense music]

[guns firing]

By April 25th, the Americans have advanced

so far across Germany, they meet up with Soviet troops

South West of the capital at Torgau.

[somber music]

American news reels show Lieutenant Alexander Silvashko

and Second Lieutenant Bill Robertson shaking hands.

[cheerful music]

East and west celebrate,

as they link up for the first time.

[cheerful music]

Soviet Women soldiers get the attention of American GIs.

As well as fighting in active combat,

women could also be nurses,

tank crew, and radio operators in the Red Army.

Also present at the Torgau celebrations,

is American war correspondent, Virginia Irwin,

from the St Louis Post Dispatch.

She and a colleague talk an Army sergeant

into a daring night-time jeep drive

through no man's land, all the way to Berlin.

[rockets blaring]

That night, they enter the capital

without official permission.

They are the first western Allied journalists into Berlin

as the Soviets are entering the city.

[Virginia] The air is heavy with smoke.

Everywhere around us is the clatter of small arms fire.

Russian artillery is pouring an almost constant barrage

into the heart of the city.

The Russians were happy,

with an almost indescribably wild joy.

In this German capital lies their true revenge

for Leningrad and Stalingrad, for Sevastapol and Moscow

[Lynette] Virginia Irwin gets one of the great scoops

in the Second World War

because she is in the center of Berlin

when the Soviets win the war.

[narrator] Zhukov's army moves to the city center

from the north and Konev from the south.

[tense music]

The fighting is still block by block, room by room.

[guns blaring]

[bombs blasting]

As the Soviets close in, many of Hitler's entourage

are trying to leave the bunker.

[bomb blasting]

Only a year ago, Hitler's de facto brother-in-law

Hermann Fegelein was celebrating his wedding

with the inner circle at the Berghof.

[canon bangs]

Now he is caught trying to flee the city.

He is accused of plotting to negotiate peace

with the Allies.

Hitler has him shot.

[tense music]

May 1st, 1945,

Soviet troops approach the shell-damaged Reichstag,

the former parliament and symbolic heart of Germany.

They're carrying the Soviet flag with them.

Cameraman, Boris Sokolov follows it closely.

He films as soldiers raise it over the Reichstag.

[tense music]

It becomes a defining image of the Soviet victory.

But Sokolov later admits, he faked it.

[bright music]

[Boris] We could not film at night

there wasn't enough light, despite the fires.

Therefore some moments were staged,

shot in the daytime.

Many believe such filming is deception,

but it is just the restoration of the facts.

[tense music]

The Soviet Union wants anyone who studies World War II

to remember one thing, they were in on the kill.

[tense music]

That flag-raising over the Reichstag building

it's equivalent to the U.S. flag-raising on Iwo Jima.

It's a sign to posterity of just who won World War II.

[narrator] The day before Hitler married

his long-term mistress, Eva Braun in the bunker.

Now on the same day, the Red flag is being hoisted

by jubilant Soviet troops over the Reichstag.

Hitler and Eva Braun kill themselves.

Hitler's remains are buried in a shallow crater

in the Reichschancellery Garden above his bunker,

just a few hundred yards from the Reichstag.

The Soviets recover the remains

and many years later destroy them

to remove any chance of them becoming revered Nazi relics.

[tanker engine roaring]

In a final lie after his death,

German radio reports that Hitler has fallen in battle.

With Hitler dead and Berlin surrounded,

German Commander finally seek a favorable surrender.

The Russians reject it.

They issue an ultimatum.

Agree to an unconditional surrender by 10:15 pm

or the Soviets will blast Berlin into ruins.

At 10:40 on May 1st, with no response from the Germans

about the unconditional surrender,

the Red Army unleashes a hurricane of fire

on central Berlin.

[canon bangs]

The last German resistance crumbles.

Shell-shocked troops finally give up the fight.

As Berliners put out white sheets as signs of surrender.

Across the city, soldiers and civilians

emerge from cellars and bombed out buildings.

Desperate residents try to eke a drop of water

from broken pipes.

And the only meat available

is what can be carved from dead horses .

They're forced to loot to survive.

[Helga] We are vegetating in a ghost town,

without electric light or gas, without water.

We are forced to think of personal hygiene as a luxury

and hot meals as abstract concepts.

We are living like ghosts in a vast field of ruins

[narrator] The Nazis said Berlin

would be the capital of a Thousand Year Reich.

Now locals give it their own name,

The Reich's Funeral Pyre.

Joseph Goebbels propaganda has lost its grip.

He is in the nearby Fuhrerbunker

with his six young children,

seen here in happier days with their mother Magda.

That evening, they are poisoned by their parents

who then both commit suicide.

Nazi Germany is now on its knees.

A day later, on May 2nd,

its leaders finally surrender Berlin unconditionally.

Then on May 7th, General Alfred Jodl,

arrives in Reims, France.

He confirms Germany's total defeat and surrender.

The ceremony takes six minutes.

But Stalin is determined to capitalize on the prestige

of capturing the German capital.

He insists that the official ceremony takes place in Berlin.

[Matthias] The Second Signing of the German Surrender

is of utmost importance to Stalin,

because he wants to show to the world

that it was the Soviet Union, the Red Army,

and also, Stalin himself,

who defeated Nazism and Germany in the Second World War.

[narrator] The Allies agree.

On May 8th, a second signing takes place

as Field Marshal Keitel heads to Karlshorst,

a suburb of Berlin,

to sign the document in front of

Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov

and a small Allied delegation.

Footage is broadcast from Berlin across the world.

[audience cheering]

Celebrations by the Soviets

take place all over the capital.

Rare Soviet footage shows Red Army soldiers

dancing in front of the Old Museum in Berlin.

[gentle music]

One Soviet soldier is carrying the spoils of war,

a captured German Panzer faust.

[gentle music]

The battle for Berlin has brought to an end

the bloodiest conflict in European history.

[soft music]

The fight for Berlin alone

has cost the Soviets 81,000 soldiers,

the Germans, 92,000.

Hundreds of thousands of German prisoners of war

are marched East to camps in Siberia.

Many will perish, as most Soviet prisoners have done

in German camps.

Soviet propaganda footage shows occupying troops

giving out bread to starving Berliners.

But some Soviet soldiers

also commit atrocities against civilians.

Over 100,000 Berlin women are raped.

[Lynette] When the Red Army comes to Berlin,

they're attacking the nationhood

and the people hood of Germany in kind.

They are saying to the Nazis,

where is your racial superiority?

Where is your Aryan purity?

They are avenging the war crimes of the Wehrmacht,

of the SS, of the entire German people

and the women of Berlin are the ones who are made to pay.

[tense music]

[narrator] When the shooting stops,

Berlin is engulfed by an eerie silence.

[airy music]

Broken only by American reconnaissance planes,

dispatched to film the utter destruction

of the German capital.

Post war Berlin is situated

in the middle of Germany's Soviet occupied zone.

But as agreed in Yalta, the city itself

is divided into an American, a British,

a French, and a Soviet sector.

Rare color footage from July 1945,

shows civilians clearing through the rubble

as they start to rebuild the city.

Mainly women, because most men over 18 are either dead

or in POW camps.

These scenes are filmed

by Hollywood director George Stevens,

who arrives with the US Army.

He makes a cameo appearance at the Brandenburg Gate.

[bright music]

But the wartime alliance is over.

The Americans want Eastern Europe and Germany

to become democratic states.

Stalin wants to keep them in the Soviet Union's

dictatorial orbit.

From the Ashes of the Second World War,

a new cold war is about to take hold.