All language subtitles for russias.wars.s01e02.1080p.web.h264-cbfm_Subtitles01_Unnamed

[narrator] Devastating wars.

Pitiless rulers...

in pursuit of power over centuries.

When Russia takes up arms,
the world holds its breath.

[foreboding theme music playing]

[narrator] 1917 marks
a new start in Russia.

In the October Revolution,
Lenin and the Bolsheviks

have violently seized power.

But the situation is chaotic.

The country descends into civil war.

Great parts of this
giant empire are in

the hands of the Bolsheviks' enemies:

"White" forces loyal to the czar,
nationalists and separatists

now threaten
the victory of the revolution.

The Russian Revolution becomes
really one of the most terrible

and bloodthirsty events
on the planet up to that date.

The horror of civil
war is always awful.

[man] The violence of the civil war
quite simply meant

that the country and
its people suffered.

Murder and killing were
the everyday reality.

[narrator] The Bolsheviks need
a new army to hold onto power,

but most of the revolutionaries
are industrial workers

and peasant farmers.

There are very few trained officers.

Building a new army seems
a Herculean task.

And it falls to a civilian
to turn the revolutionaries

into an effective army.

Lev Davidovich Bronstein,

known as Leon Trotsky.

[man 2] Trotsky was good-looking,

handsome, vain,
flamboyant and loquacious,

but very bad at making friends

and actually didn't bother
to cultivate a party.

He just thought he was a genius,
and he would win everything.

He'd spent his life
as an orator and a journalist.

He was an extremely good writer,
but it turned out he was also

an extremely good strategist.

[narrator] Trotsky is a key member
of the revolutionary inner circle.

In 1918, he's appointed
the People's Commissar for War

and begins to build up the Red Army.

[Sebag Montefiore]
Trotsky, it turned out,

was an extremely talented
military commander.

And as Napoleon said,

war and prostitution
are two professions that are often

done better by amateurs
than by professionals.

[suspenseful music playing]

[narrator] In building the Red Army,

Trotsky soon ditches
revolutionary ideas.

Instead of recruiting mainly
volunteers, workers and peasants,

he integrates nearly 50,000 officers
and 215,000 NCOs from the czar's army

to be the backbone
of the new Red Army.

Trotsky's success in
building up the Red Army

was based on principles he would
have rejected as anti-socialist

just five years before.

Drastic measures and iron discipline.

Never mind a workers'
army of volunteers.

He created an army that relied, as
armies always had, on iron discipline.

Perhaps with the one difference.

That the discipline
here was much harsher.

[narrator] Trotsky relies on
unquestioning obedience and brutality.

He introduces the death penalty.

Political commissars are to execute
any soldiers who try to retreat.

[Kusber] The principle of enforcing
obedience in the army

by violence and threats
was fully developed in the Red Army.

But that's not something Russian

soldiers weren't
already familiar with.

The czar's army had already used
such drastic measures

to force people to fight.

In the Red Army,
Trotsky and his successors

perfected those techniques.

[crowd cheering]

[narrator] The Red Army grows
at a furious pace.

Founded in 1918,

by 1919, it already numbers
a million and a half men.

By 1920, there are five million
Red Army soldiers.

The most modern weaponry
is deployed in the civil war:

machine guns, rapid-fire artillery,
armored trains and armored cars.

Aircraft, too, play an important role.

You could say that was
Trotsky's great skill,

seeing what forms of combat,

what weapons made
an army most effective.

For example,
he used armored railway trains

that could advance
to forward positions.

Those are the kinds of ideas
he introduced,

with a form of professionalism
completely unexpected in someone

who had never served in the military.

[narrator] The civil war
takes a terrible toll in human life.

By the start of 1921,

Russian society and its economy
are in a catastrophic state.

The whole country faces starvation.

One focus of opposition
to the Bolsheviks is Kronstadt,

the naval base
at the gates of St Petersburg.

At the beginning of 1921, sailors
mutiny against Soviet despotism.

[Stadelmann] You have to remember
that the sailors of Kronstadt

were actually the very first
supporters of the Bolsheviks.

But when Moscow gets wind
of events in Kronstadt

that don't fit with
the Bolsheviks' plans,

none of that matters any more.

[narrator] 50,000 Red Army troops

crush the uprising in a merciless
and savage campaign.

Survivors face summary execution.

Nothing must be allowed to get in the
way of the Bolsheviks' hold on power.

In 1921, the Red Army finally
defeats czarist forces in Crimea.

Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia
fall to the Red Army too.

The civil war is over.

1922 marks the birth of the USSR,

the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics.

This gigantic empire covers more
than 22 million square kilometers,

a sixth of the Earth's surface.

But the toll in human life is high.

Up to ten million people
die in the Russian civil war.

In combat, through political purges,
and starvation.

About two million
are forced into exile.

[Sebag Montefiore] The Bolsheviks
had come to power believing in terror.

They believed in the restructuring
of society using violence.

They were also organized
in a sort of vanguard,

in a very hierarchical,
organized manner,

which was actually very
well-suited to controlling Russia.

[narrator] With the founding
of the Soviet Union,

Lenin has achieved his goal.

He becomes the first
head of government

of this newly created country.

For him, the terror
since the revolution

is the price to be paid
for the victory of the Proletariat.

If you actually look at the history of

the Bolsheviks from
the very beginning,

Lenin is a mass murderer
and is a despicable character,

and starts this scale of escalation
and scale of violence

that carries throughout
the whole Soviet regime.

It becomes part of the DNA
of the Soviet system.

[bells tolling]

[narrator] But in 1922,

the founding year of the Soviet Union,
Lenin suffers a stroke.

Two years later, after a further
series of strokes, he dies.

Behind the scenes,

there's a vicious struggle
over the succession.

Besides Leon Trotsky,

Joseph Stalin is also determined
to inherit Lenin's mantle.

[Stadelmann] Stalin
builds his power-base

slowly from the end
of the civil war in the early '20s,

and accelerates in the second half
of that decade.

Stalin was no great orator who could
appeal to the masses like Trotsky.

[narrator] For Trotsky, the
Soviet Union is just the beginning.

He wants global revolution.

Stalin by contrast wants to achieve
socialism in his own country,

in a strong Soviet Union.

[Stadelmann] There's often a
suggestion that Stalin was just, say,

a crafty, ruthless yokel.

Not so. He was highly intelligent.

Trotsky had made himself
a target for everyone.

He'd attacked everyone
and always knew better.

He'd made himself unpopular.

Stalin, by contrast,
worked in the background,

creating a giant network of people
who became so dependent on him,

he ended up able to do
whatever he liked with them.

That was his kind
of political intelligence.

[narrator] In 1925,
Stalin uses his extensive network

to have Trotsky dismissed
as head of the Red Army.

In 1927, he has him
thrown out of the Party.

Two years later,
Trotsky is forced into exile.

Stalin is in sole control,

working to consolidate his power
against all possible challenges.

At the end of the 1920s,

Stalin starts to transform
his devastated country.

He plans to suppress
private enterprise

and industrialize the Soviet Union
as fast as possible.

[Sebag Montefiore]He tried to do this
in a very short term, in five years.

To fund it, to fund
the American technology...

most of the technology came
from the United States

and Germany, of course.

He paid for it with grain.

And to do that,
he had to send the grain abroad.

[somber music playing]

[narrator] Stalin dictates that
agricultural yield must be increased.

Peasant farmers are to be gathered in
great production units

known as "Kolchozes."

It's the start
of forced collectivization.

Stalin had the suspicion,
and he was right,

that the peasants weren't at all
convinced by the new system.

They were opposed to it
and were blocking it.

And this stubbornness was
to be broken by collectivization.

Broken by force.

[narrator] Stalin declares war
on his own people.

Peasant farmers who refuse to be

collectivized face
drastic punishments.

Five to ten years in the notorious
prison camps of the Gulag.

But the effects of forced
collectivization are catastrophic.

There are fewer and fewer
farmers to work the fields,

and fewer and fewer fields.

The yield of the harvests shrinks.

To make matters worse, each village
now has to pay a tax in grain

that leaves them
with almost nothing to eat.

In 1932 and 1933,
there is a massive famine

in every wheat-producing region
of the Soviet Union.

[Richie] The horror is that
these millions of people

are deliberately starved to death
as the production from their farms,

their agricultural production,
is simply stolen from them.

And so, of course,
this is a traumatic event,

and it's a traumatic event
in world history.

[narrator] In spite of the famine,

Stalin insists
on transforming the country

into an industrialized state.

It doesn't matter who suffers.

No one and nothing
must stand in the way.

The export of grain continues.

In 1931, the Soviet Union exports
5.2 million tons of grain.

In the famine year of 1933,

1.7 million tons are still exported
to Europe and the United States.

Ukraine is especially hard hit
by the resulting famine.

Ukraine is an extremely fertile
agricultural land.

There is a high proportion
of peasant farmers in the population.

And that's obviously why such a
disproportionate number of Ukrainians

became victims of the famine.

[narrator] To Ukrainians,
this desperate

famine is known as the "Holodomor."

"Killing by starvation."

[Stadelmann] Holodomor
is a word invented in Ukraine.

And the famine of 1932 and '33 has
a particular meaning for Ukrainians.

Of the approximately seven million
victims of the famine,

about half died in Ukraine.

Ukrainian historians see the Holodomor

as an attempted genocide
of the Ukrainian people.

[narrator] While the
population starves,

the Soviet Union continues to re-arm.

And everywhere Stalin sees
enemies to be annihilated.

From the mid-1930s,

a wave of terror strikes
every part of society.

This is the time of the Great Terror.

[Sebag Montefiore] Stalin's Great

Terror was one of the
most extraordinary

political events of the 20th century.

Never has a great
state, a great power,

mutilated and destroyed its own power,
its own personnel,

to such an extent as Stalin did
in the Great Terror from 1936 to '39.

[oppressive droning sounds]

But his idea was, first of all,

better to kill ten innocent men
than to let one spy escape.

And by spy, he meant not someone who
was actually betraying the country,

but someone who might one day
think about betraying the country.

[narrator] The dreaded secret

political police
crack down ruthlessly.

Those under suspicion for any reason
fall into the hands of its agents.

They face show trials
with verdicts decided in advance.

Between July 1937
and mid-November 1938,

one and a half million people
are arrested.

700,000 are executed.

Most of the others
land in the Soviet

punishment and work
camps of the Gulag.

Lists are drawn up across the country
of people to be killed.

Stalin personally signs
hundreds of death lists.

Ironically, some of
these groups of people

were the people who actually
could have enhanced his power

much more than others.

And one of these groups of many were,
for example, his own military.

[narrator] More than 30,000 officers,
generals, and field marshals

fall victim to the purges.

[Neitzel] In 1937,
Stalin is suffering from paranoia

and this is the moment
when the great purges strike.

They take the most important
members of the officer corps,

the thinkers, those who have
experience of the civil war.

[narrator] Leon Trotsky's supporters
are especially suspect.

He himself is in exile
in faraway Mexico.

But Stalin still fears his old rival.

In 1940, he decides to eliminate him.

A Soviet agent murders Trotsky
in Mexico City with an ice pick.

Nearly 300,000 line the streets
for his funeral.

[bells tolling]

[Kusber] Trotsky certainly
doesn't deserve to be admired.

He's responsible for a large part
of the brutal system

that characterized not just the Red

Army, but really the
whole Soviet Union.

Trotsky's idealization
in Latin America

is down to the fact
that Stalin's regime

turned the screw of brutality
even further.

So Trotzky may seem
the more harmless of the two.

But that doesn't make him in any sense
a model to be followed.

[narrator] On paper, the Soviet Union
is a federation of equal partners.

But giant Russia dominates
the smaller Soviet Republics.

In the 1930s, a policy of
Russification is introduced.

The Russian language supplants
other national languages

like Ukrainian or Belarusian.

The idea of making the Soviet
Union into a homogenous nation

is an impossible nonsense.

Basically, the Soviet Union
is the successor

to the multi-ethnic Russian Empire,
a confused mish-mash of peoples.

Stalin himself is the best example:

a Georgian who might have loved
to be a Russian.

But he could never hide
his heavy Georgian accent.

[narrator] But Stalin
is still suspicious

of his empire's ethnic minorities.

One of the great fears was that

Ukrainians, Poles,
Georgians, Armenians

would seek national independence
or national autonomy from the centre.

And therefore, in 1937,

he launched the national operations
to literally kill, by quota,

vast numbers of any of
the national ethnic minorities.

[narrator] Soviet citizens
of Polish origin

are among the countless victims
of the National Operations.

Around 100,000 die
in a campaign of mass murder.

Stalin is too afraid
they could subvert the system.

He combines his nationalism with
ambitions to become a global power.

An important milestone
is the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact

of August 1939.

Soviet foreign minister Molotov and
his German counterpart von Ribbentrop

sign the so-called Hitler-Stalin pact
in Moscow.

A secret annex seals
the fate of Poland,

divided between the two countries.

On September 1, 1939,
Germany invades Poland:

the start of the Second World War.

Two weeks later, the Red Army
marches into Poland from the East.

German and Russian troops stage a

joint military parade
in Brest-Litovsk.

But there's more in the Hitler-Stalin
pact than the division of Poland.

[Kusbar] In the secret annex,

Finland was allocated to the
Soviet Union's sphere of influence.

So were the Baltic states of Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania.

Under massive pressure,
the three Baltic states

were forced to accept Soviet

garrisons, the Red
Army, on their soil.

But the Finnish government rejected
the same Soviet demand.

[narrator] At the end of November

1939, the Soviet
Union invades Finland.

It's an unequal struggle.

The Red Army,
attacking with heavy weapons,

is far bigger than
its Finnish adversary.

[Sebag Montefiore] The Russians
were extremely arrogant.

They were sure that the Finns
would just simply collapse.

And instead, the Finns resisted
efficiently and with amazing courage

to the extent that they killed
over 130,000 Soviet troops.

[narrator] This campaign,
soon known as the Winter War,

bears little similarity
to conventional warfare.

The Finns counter
the mighty Soviet army

with improvised,
highly effective methods.

The broad, sparsely populated
landscapes favor guerrilla tactics:

ambushes with small mobile units
and critical use of snipers.

[Neitzel] The Finns are unbelievably
brave and put up heroic resistance.

And the first assault by the great
Red Army fails to defeat Finland.

[old-fashioned news fanfare]

[male newsreader] More pictures
illustrating the wonderful fight

that Finland is putting up
against Russia keep arriving

and here are some of the latest.

They show a Russian convoy after it
had been trapped and put out of action

by the Finns.

[Neitzel] It was a serious
embarrassment for the Soviet Union.

They didn't achieve their main goal,

they couldn't manage
to defeat Finland.

[narrator] After
regrouping, the Soviets

launch a new offensive
with fresh troops.

They finally break through
Finnish lines in February 1940.

But victory comes at a price.

130,000 Soviet troops are killed
in the Winter War.

Finnish casualties are
70,000 dead and wounded.

Spring 1940.

In the peace treaty,
Finland remains independent,

but gives up land to the Soviet Union.

This gives Stalin a buffer-zone
around Leningrad,

as Saint Petersburg is now known.

In the summer of 1940,

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
are absorbed into the USSR.

Through his alliance with Hitler,

Stalin also has eastern Poland
under his control.

Imperialism in the name of communism.

[suspenseful music playing]

[narrator] June 22nd, 1941.
German armies invade Russia.

Hitler plans a war of annihilation

codenamed, "Operation Barbarossa."

Hitler has broken the Nazi-Soviet
non-aggression pact.

[Neitzel] The Red Army
doesn't have a proper defense plan.

It is completely taken by surprise

because Stalin refused to believe
warnings of a German invasion

and banned any preparations.

In the very first weeks, the Red Army
suffered horrendous losses.

By the end of 1941, the Red Army no

longer existed in the
form it had in June.

Its soldiers were either
dead or prisoners of war.

[narrator] Germany's surprise attack

has apparently been
entirely successful.

Army groups north, center, and south
have split the invasion between them,

from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

By the end of August the Baltic,
Belarus and large parts of Ukraine

have been occupied.

[Richie] It's ironic that
when Barbarossa begins

and the Germans arrive
in villages and towns in Ukraine

or Belorussia or the Baltic states,

they're greeted with bread and salt
and wreaths of flowers.

And people are so relieved,

because if you've just been through
the Holodomor under Stalin

anybody is looking pretty good.

The Germans hadn't
come to liberate them,

but to suppress them,

as the Ukrainians,
the Belarusians and the Baltic peoples

soon have to recognize.

[narrator] In this war of annihilation

of Bolshevism, there
are no more rules.

It's a manhunt:

of Soviet soldiers, civilians,
and above all Jews.

Hitler makes it very clear
that his war in the east

is not a war merely for territory.

It's a racial war.
It's a war of extermination.

"Vernichtungskrieg."

It's a war that's going to completely
change the ethnic map

of Central and Eastern Europe.

[narrator] German soldiers can
commit crimes against civilians,

without any fear of facing
a military court.

Red Army political commissars are not
to be treated as prisoners of war,

but shot on sight.

The Germans deliberately
let Soviet prisoners starve to death.

Approximately three million
captured Soviet soldiers die

of hunger and disease.

[Neitzel] The remarkable thing is
the enormous ability of the Red Army

to pick itself up and confront
the enemy again and again,

always to carry on fighting.

No one expected that.

[narrator] To raise public morale,
the struggle against Hitler's Germany

is dubbed the "Great Patriotic War."

The Soviet Union soon has
five million soldiers under arms.

Hitler and his generals underestimate
the quality of Soviet weaponry.

The appearance of the T-34 tank
in the summer of 1941 is a huge shock.

It is soon recognized
as a formidable opponent.

The Germans have
enormous problems countering it.

It's superior to all their own tanks.

But a war isn't won
by just one technology,

but usually through mass production.

The T-34 was simple to manufacture.

It had a diesel engine,
it was suited to the terrain.

It became a symbol of victory.

Though of course that wasn't
the only reason the Red Army won.

[narrator] The Red Army
also uses unorthodox methods.

In autumn 1941,

a new night-bomber regiment
comes into being,

consisting entirely of women.

They fly two-seater Po-2s,
usually used for training and farming.

Sluggish biplanes of wood and canvas.

They take off at dusk, singly,
at intervals of several minutes.

Close to the target, the pilots
switch off their engines and glide in.

Since the night-attacks come
without warning,

the Germans call them "night witches."

Darkness protects them from
much faster German fighters.

The pilots become Soviet stars.

23 become "Heroines
of the Soviet Union."

[Neitzel] The decisive factor

was the willingness of
individual Soviet citizens to fight.

They didn't just say, "I've had
enough, I'm not fighting for Stalin!"

Probably very few of them
were fighting for Stalin.

They were fighting for their village,

for their connection
to their homeland.

That was the decisive factor
that stopped the Germans.

[narrator] In autumn and winter 1941,
Germany's advance falters.

The troops are ill-equipped
for the oncoming Russian winter.

Soon, more soldiers are dying
from cold than from combat.

Meanwhile the Soviet Union
is moving more and more efficiently

onto a war footing.

Stalin delegates military decisions
to his generals.

One of them
is Georgi Konstantinovich Zhukov.

With the other generals,
he stems the German advance

using any means necessary.

Zhukov certainly plays a significant
role as a leading general.

He's involved in almost all
the important battles,

and he's one of the capable
thinkers responsible

for stopping the German advance
before Moscow.

He's presented as the great victorious
figurehead, the great general,

the "Hannibal" of the Red Army.

Of course, he wasn't that.

Zhukov exemplifies the positive

and also the negative aspects
of the Red Army.

He would walk over corpses, and
he wasn't too worried about losses.

Zhukov also left his trail of blood.

[narrator] Zhukov is a product
of the tough Soviet military ethos.

He deals mercilessly with deserters.

And he doesn't hesitate to throw
more and more soldiers into battle.

1942: The Germans attack
the city of Stalingrad.

They soon hold 90 percent of it.

But by autumn, Zhukov
and other generals

have bottled up 300,000
German soldiers in the city.

A bitter struggle ensues.

The Red Army cuts
all the German supply lines.

In January 1943,
the German 5th Army surrenders.

[Neitzel] The battle for Stalingrad
is a psychological turning point,

for the Soviets too.

For the first time, they prove
they can mount a complex operation

to bottle up an entire German army.

Psychologically, that matters.

It gives them hope they can
force the Germans back.

The big question is: at what price?

[narrator] About 150,000
German soldiers die at Stalingrad,

in combat, or from hunger and cold.

On the Soviet side,
an estimated 400,000 die.

German losses at Stalingrad
are lower than the Soviets'.

We believe 20,000 Red Army soldiers
were shot as deserters alone.

They drown the German advance
in their own soldiers' blood.

[narrator] Victory at Stalingrad
is an important signal

for Great Britain and the USA,

the Soviet Union's two main allies
in the fight against Hitler.

The Americans also help with supplies.

Via the agreements known
as the "Lend-Lease Act,"

the Soviet Union receives weapons,
vehicles and raw materials

worth more than
eleven billion dollars.

They would have succeeded
in halting the German advance

with their own resources,

maybe even pushed them back somewhat,

but they certainly couldn't have
forced them back to Berlin.

Their offensive
capabilities were based

on more than 400,000 American trucks,

on radio transmitters, uniforms,
food supplies and so on.

[narrator] With support
from the Western Allies,

the Red Army forces the Germans
to withdraw further and further.

In February 1945, General Zhukov's
forces win the Battle of Berlin,

bringing the Second World War
in Europe to a close.

[Neitzel] When the Red Army
raised the red flag

over the Reichstag on May 2, 1945,

it was partly thanks to logistics help
from the USA and Britain.

[narrator] Roughly 24 million
Soviet citizens

lose their lives in the
Second World War.

13 million are soldiers.

Higher losses than any other nation.

Victory in the Great Patriotic War
against Hitler's Germany

is the most celebrated achievement
in the Soviet culture of remembrance.

It's the Nation's
second founding myth,

even taking precedence
over the October Revolution.

What inspired and moved people,

what spoke to their hearts...

It was this war,
in which every family lost someone.

[faint cheering from the crowd]

[somber music playing]

[Stadelmann] This legend
of the Great Patriotic War,

of the heroic victory.

It's one of the crucial ideas
that has been carried over

since the collapse
of the Soviet Union.

It has become part of the collective
memory of the Russian people.

In Russia,

the May holidays, celebrating victory
in the Second World War,

are the most important holidays
of the year.

They still are. I'd
say, more than ever.

[narrator] At the end
of the Second World War,

the Soviet Union is
stronger than ever.

It's now the world's second
superpower, alongside the USA.

But soon, these allies are rivals.

The war is over.

At the Potsdam conference
in the summer of 1945,

Great Britain, the USA
and the Soviet Union

sit down to decide
the post-war world order.

The anti-Hitler coalition collapses.

Now it's all about
national self-interest.

Stalin, the communist,
plays classic great power politics.

After the war, the Soviet Union
creates a buffer zone

of communist satellite states.

Its military alliance, the Warsaw
Pact, faces the western alliance:

NATO.

[Sebag Montefiore] Stalin had always
believed in Marxism-Leninism.

And he was always convinced that,
ultimately, there would be a struggle

with the capitalist West.

That was inbuilt into
his world view already.

But first of all, he
wanted to make sure

that the Soviet Union
was as safe as possible.

And that led him
to take control of Eastern Europe.

[narrator] But that
met with opposition

in some Eastern European countries.

In October 1956, the Hungarian

population demanded
democratic reforms.

Communist one-party dictatorship
seemed to be over.

[Neitzel] Hungary in 1956
was especially dangerous,

because Hungary announced
its withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact,

and the Hungarian army changed sides.

And they had to defeat this army.

[narrator] The Red Army brutally
suppresses the struggle for freedom.

The hunger for democracy
remains unfulfilled.

Hungary stays in the Eastern Block.

[Neitzel] It was very clear.

The Soviet Union was not going to
allow any state along its buffer zone

to break rank.

There was no confusion.

Moscow decides
it isn't going to be trifled with.

[narrator] The Soviet Union pursues
its interests in many other countries.

In 1953, the Red Army helps crush
an uprising in East Germany.

In 1968, Soviet troops
march into Czechoslovakia,

putting a violent end
to the Prague Spring.

And there are proxy wars
around the world.

In the Korean War, Soviet military
advisors and fighter pilots

fight on the side of the North.

In Vietnam, the communist north
receives weapons and advice

in its war against the USA.

And in Africa, the
Soviet Union supports

the socialists in the
Angolan civil war.

[Neitzel] That's the logic
of power blocks.

They support or install political

systems aligned with
their own interests,

all over the world.

In that respect, the USA differs
little from the Soviet Union.

It's simply a global struggle
for influence.

[narrator] After 1949,
the Soviets have nuclear weapons...

and threaten to use them.

An atomic arms race
starts with the USA.

In 1961,
the Soviets test a hydrogen bomb,

setting off the largest explosion
the world has ever known.

[muffled explosion]

[narrator] The so-called "Czar-Bomb"

destroys everything
in a radius of 35 kilometers.

It has a deterrent
effect on both sides.

[Neitzel] I would argue
that atomic weapons

led to a relatively stable
balance of power,

because it was clear to everyone,
or at least to heads of government,

that a nuclear war
could never be fought,

so it must be avoided at all costs.

[narrator] And yet nuclear war
threatens in the autumn of 1962,

when the Soviet Union secretly
stations atomic weapons on Cuba.

American spy planes discover
Soviet launching-pads on the island.

President Kennedy demands
the missiles be removed

and threatens a nuclear
response if they are fired.

But when Kennedy offers to withdraw
US missiles stationed in Turkey,

Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev
backs down,

and removes the missiles from Cuba.

I don't believe that
either Kennedy or Khrushchev

were really prepared to see
the destruction of their own country

in an argument over
a Caribbean island.

[Krushcheva] The great resolution
for the Cuban missile crisis in '62

between Kennedy and
Khrushchev was that

we really cannot use nuclear weapons,

because if we do,
then it's the end of the world.

[narrator] But the explosive arms race
between East and West doesn't stop.

[muffled explosion]

[narrator] By 1990, the US
has 21,000 nuclear warheads.

The Soviets have 33,000.

More than enough to destroy
all of humanity.

One of the Cold War's most significant
conflicts is in Afghanistan.

The Soviet Union's southern neighbor
seems to be unstable.

Islamist and anti-communist tendencies
are making the Soviet Union nervous.

The plan is to bring order and install
a Soviet-friendly government.

And so in December 1979,

a KGB unit murders
the Afghan president in his palace.

[crowd chanting]

[narrator] The Soviets appoint
a puppet leader in his place.

[crowd cheering]

[Neitzel] The Soviet Union's great
fear was that Islamists in Afghanistan

would take over the government.

And that radical Islamism could then
leach into the southern Soviet Union.

[narrator] Afghanistan
must at all costs

remain in the Soviet
sphere of influence.

A few days later,
80,000 heavily armed Soviet troops

march into Afghanistan
to stabilize the country.

[Kusber] They marched in to impose
a "Sovietization" of the system,

believing there was a groundswell of
popular approval for the government.

They thought the Soviet invasion would
meet with a degree of acceptance.

They were wrong.

Allahu Akbar!

[narrator] It quickly becomes clear:

the Soviet intervention has no support
among the Afghan people.

The invasion soon falters.

The Afghan Mujehaddin engage in
a brutal struggle with Soviet forces.

[Neitzel] It's interesting
that the Soviet Union

doesn't understand Afghanistan,

and above all they have no idea how
to resolve the conflict politically.

They only have their military card,
or rather a wrecking ball.

[narrator] Unmotivated
Soviet troops fail

to bring Afghanistan
under their control.

The Mujahideen disappear
into the mountains

and harry the Russians
with guerrilla tactics.

The USA intervenes,

supplying the Mujahideen
with money and weapons.

That land over there is yours.

You'll go back to it one day,

because your fight will prevail

and you'll have your homes
and your mosques back again.

Because your cause is right
and God is on your side.

[crowd cheering]

The Americans equip the Mujahideen
with very flexible weapons systems

that are particularly effective
in this terrain.

Stinger missiles, for
example, are ideal

for bringing down Soviet helicopters.

[narrator] In the
process, the Americans

support a Mujahideen commander:

Osama bin Laden.

[Neitzel] Of course,
the Americans say:

"We're giving the
Soviets their Vietnam."

And it works.

The Americans don't
have much in common

with radial Islamists
like the Mujahideen,

but the enemy of my
enemy is my friend.

[narrator] The war in Afghanistan
lasts ten years.

The world's second-biggest
military power is unable to win it.

In 1989, the Soviet Union pulls out,

militarily and politically humiliated.

Casualty estimates diverge.

Up to a million people
may have been killed.

Seven million Afghans are displaced.

Official figures on the Soviet side:

15,000 soldiers
killed, 50,000 wounded.

The Soviet withdrawal has a lot to do

with the new man at
the head of the USSR:

Mikhail Gorbachev.

His policies of "Glasnost"
and "Perestroika,"

"openness" and "restructuring,"

have far-reaching consequences
for the whole of the Soviet Union.

[Kusber] The Afghan war plays
an important role

in the fall of the Soviet Union,

because it strengthens
the doubts in Soviet society,

in the different Soviet republics,

that the Soviet system can survive.

[Neitzel] Afghanistan was one factor
in the fall of the Soviet Union,

but by no means the only one.

I would argue that the Soviet Union
would have collapsed

even without the war in Afghanistan,
perhaps three years later.

But the Soviet Union was forced
by the West, by NATO, by the USA,

into an arms race.

And this arms race, this economic
rivalry, was unsustainable.

[narrator] And so the end
of the Afghan war

also heralds the end of the Cold War.

But against the hopes of many,

it will not usher in a lasting peace.