Original subtitles

(kids laughing)

NARRATOR: France 1952.

The Bassié family celebrates Christmas. They are happy.

They love each other. Their dream... is the American dream.

(jazz music playing)

(projector whirring)

What they don't know,

is that they will soon be plunged into what is known as, The Cold War.

The War of Worlds.

(dramatic music playing)

The threat of nuclear war is real.

Scientists measure it by a virtual clock.

The stroke of midnight would mean... the Apocalypse!

(explosion)

(opening theme music playing)

The War of Worlds is the East against the West,

against America who is protecting part of Europe.

The rest of Europe is dominated by Russia,

known at the time as the USSR, the Soviet Union.

After China in 1949, will the entire Asian continent be swayed?

Korea and Indochina are in flames.

The Communist conquest progresses.

This conquest is embodied by one man,

one of History's titans and a merciless tyrant.

Joseph Vissarionovich Jughashvili,

aka Stalin, the Man of Steel.

He succeeded Lenin

and after reigning over the USSR for 20 years,

he now controls half of Europe.

But here in late 1952, Stalin is sick.

Progressively more paranoid, he terrifies his entourage.

One day he eats a banana that isn't ripe enough,

and has all the suppliers arrested, including the Minister of Commerce.

He also has his doctors arrested, accusing them of trying to poison him.

This is the Doctor's Plot.

Stalin revives anti-Semitism. He says,

"The are many Zionists among the doctors.

All Zionists are American Secret Service Agents."

March 5th, 1953.

From his window, the American Military Attaché, Major Martin Manhoff,

films a strange cortège of official cars.

(bell tolls)

At 6 AM, on Radio Moscow, Yuri Levitan, the voice of power,

delivers an important news flash.

RADIO ANNOUNCER: This is Moscow!

Dear Comrades and friends!

The Central Committee of the Communist Party,

the URSS Council of Ministers,

with great sadness,

inform the Party and all the workers of the Soviet Union,

that following a long illness,

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin,

is dead!

NARRATOR: The American military attaché manages to film the precise moment

when Stalin's coffin is transported,

in the freezing cold, to the House of the Unions.

In the Pillar Hall, where the regime leaders' bodies are always exposed.

So the people may pay their respects,

to the sounds of Tchaikovsky's 6th symphony, Pathetic.

(symphony plays)

Stalin's body has already been embalmed,

like that of Lenin, who he will soon join in the mausoleum in Red Square.

March 9th, 1953.

Five million Soviet citizens come to grieve.

Many inducted by force. Others mourn the "Little Father of Peoples."

All are worried about the future.

At the funeral, only the Communist parties are represented.

Those in power in the so-called "brother countries"

like Poland, Hungary, Romania,

or those fighting in Indochina or Korea.

China's Prime Minister, Zhou Enlai, delivers an emphatic tribute.

As for Mao, he remains in Peking.

He gathers his people in front of Stalin's portrait

on the wall of the Forbidden City.

The global press is in mourning.

The London Daily Mirror headlines, "These are crocodile tears."

What are the Muscovites truly thinking,

as they march tirelessly in front of their master's remains?

Some say under their breath, "We came to be certain he is truly dead."

Sonia Sbitneva is in the crowd with her crying grandmother, who tells her,

"Don't worry, these are tears of joy. Because he killed my family.

My sons, my brothers, my husband, my father,

Stalin killed them all.

So we cried together, in joy and in sorrow."

Near Stalin's remains, his daughter, Svetlana.

She recalls...

"I was with him in his dacha, his country house.

He fainted. He soiled himself. He was on the ground, unconscious.

Nobody dared intervene.

Since the Doctor's Plot, there were no more doctors available.

He had them all arrested, even his personal doctor.

He had either killed them or thrown them into the gulag."

The three principal dignitaries of Soviet power stand across from her.

Khrushchev, the executioner from Ukraine.

Beria, the feared leader of the deadly political police.

Malenkov, the executor of all the dirty work.

They let Stalin agonize for three days.

For fear of retribution should he wake up,

to be sure he was truly dead and to organize his succession.

Stalin's son, Vasily, an air force general,

is convinced that Beria poisoned his father,

during their dinner together the night before he fell ill.

Beria believed that Stalin wanted to kill him.

So he may have taken matters into his own hands,

making people believe that Stalin was sleeping

when in fact, he was dying.

However, Stalin's children could be inconvenient witnesses.

Vasily and Svetlana are very worried about their fate.

They know what these men are capable of.

The casket containing Stalin's embalmed body

is taken to the Red Square mausoleum.

Svetlana Stalin declares,

"These animals have been at each other's throats for 40 years.

For 40 years, the country has been governed by sharks.

No country in the world has reached this level of self-destruction."

Will Svetlana survive?

Will the world survive?

The face-off between the East and West

rides on this behind-the-scenes fight for power.

Which of Stalin's accomplices would be the most ruthless?

Beria imposes himself as the preferred candidate for succession.

Because he is the master of Stalinist terror.

He strives to show that he follows the Party line,

contrary to the accusations of some,

and that he is familiar with its language.

(in Russian) The people of our country can rest assured

that the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union

will not rest until they save

the unbreakable unity among the ranks

of the Party and its Leaders!

NARRATOR: When Stalin's coffin makes its grand entrance into the mausoleum,

Beria is the first pallbearer. In front of Khrushchev, who is tense.

But in just a few days,

Beria creates surprise by doing the opposite of what is expected of him.

He frees half of those deported to the Gulag.

He forbids torture.

Beria believes that if the Communist regime wants to remain in power,

it is urgent that it becomes more liberal.

Consumer goods must be introduced, military expenditures must be reined in,

the standard of living must rise and tensions in the world must be defused.

But will Khrushchev let this happen?

(gunshots)

Stalin's death brings about wild hopes

within the countries occupied by the Soviet army,

especially in the GDR, in East Berlin.

June 17th, 1953, the Brandenburg Gates.

In the city center that was destroyed in 1945, the German workers rebel.

The ultimate provocation, the Soviet flag is torn down.

Everywhere, Red flags are burned.

The police attempt to protect the regime's leaders,

who just increased output rates while lowering salaries.

The German Communist leaders call for help.

Soviet tanks come to their rescue and shoot into the crowds.

(tanks gunshots)

(gunshots)

(gunshots and people screaming)

(heavy gunshot)

The Red Army rapidly quashes the insurrection, in bloodshed.

This is the first major uprising of the Socialist camp.

In Moscow, Beria's opponents accuse him.

His policy is responsible.

It will lead to the destruction of Communism and the victory of the West.

The last images of Beria, shaking hands with those that will have him arrested

several hours later on June 26th, 1953.

All these men, dressed like the Mafia, have Beria assassinated.

Khrushchev ultimately seizes the power.

He pushes Malenkov aside, but this time, without having him killed.

Times are changing.

Opposite this new Soviet rule, the United States have a new president.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower succeeds President Truman.

(crowd cheering)

Eisenhower, a World War II hero,

has been elected to put an end to the Korean War.

In Korea, since 1950, the United States and 15 other countries

are engaged in fighting against the Communist invasion

of the North Koreans and the Chinese, armed by the Soviets.

The UN Forces ultimately push them back to the 38th parallel.

In the village of Panmunjom, discussions, already underway,

are accelerated by Stalin's death.

In Panmunjom, on July 27th, 1953,

a truce is signed in complete silence.

The delegates do not utter a word to each other.

After three years of combat, they do not even look at one another,

and go their separate ways without as much as a handshake.

The three copies of the truce are carried

to the headquarters of North Korea's leader,

Kim Il-sung, who is sporting his marshal's uniform.

Kim Il-sung can thank China's Peng Dehuai,

who saved him just as his country

was about to fall into the hands of the Americans.

The North Korean dictator has no reason to boast.

The Korean War has resulted in nearly

three million military and civilian deaths.

Korea is devastated.

The front line is blocked in a demilitarized zone

One hundred and fifty miles long and 2.5 miles wide.

UN soldiers set up what they call "the Freedom Village",

used to exchange war prisoners.

These South Korean prisoners are very fortunate.

Eight thousand survivors, out of sixty thousand.

A significant number were massacred or died of exhaustion,

or were forced to serve in the North Korean army.

As for the 7,000 American prisoners, nearly half were dead

and 23 refused to go home, for ideological motives.

Kim Il-sung presides over a grandiose victory parade

with the usual Communist icons.

Stalin, of course,

but also Ho Chi Minh,

who has been fighting France in Indochina for the past seven years.

(crowd cheering)

The United Nations Forces return home. Like these French volunteers,

who are sent directly to fight in Indochina.

The American soldiers don't all leave Korea after the ceasefire.

Those who remain, to protect the South, aren't in good spirits.

But the end of the fighting doesn't stop the Doomsday clock

from creeping dangerously close to midnight.

Minus two, a record.

Because the first prototypes of the H-bomb have been tested by the Americans,

followed by the Soviets.

(explosion)

Hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bomb,

(explosion)

it forces both sides to find diplomatic solutions to their conflicts.

Geneva, April 26th, 1954.

An international conference is organized to end the Korean War.

The participants have very disparate points of view,

a reflection of the War of Worlds.

On one side, Molotov, the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs,

Zhou Enlai, the Chinese Premier,

and the North Koreans, demand the reunification of the peninsula.

On the other side, the South Koreans and Foster Dulles,

the American Secretary of State, want free elections.

The Conference quickly hits a dead-end.

And the news from Indochina completely upsets the agenda.

Will the East defeat the West?

In Indochina,

the Vietnamese and the French Expeditionary Forces

have been confronting one another for nearly ten years

in a never-ending guerrilla war.

The French Ambassador, Mr. Henri Bonnet,

tirelessly attempts to convince the Americans to intervene.

INTERVIEWER: Are the French in Indochina fighting for the independence

of the native peoples, or are you fighting to hold the colony?

We are fighting for the independence

for preserving the independence of the native people.

For preventing them to fall under the Bolshevik yoke.

We are making sacrifices, all of us

which are heavy for the American tax payer, heavy for the French tax payer,

but we are building a strength for the free world,

which will prevent war, and to maintain peace which will last, I hope.

INTERVIEWER: Thank you very much for being with us tonight, sir.

NARRATOR: The Americans are realizing that Europe,

and more specifically, France, is under Communist influence.

The most powerful union, the CGT, battles against the war in Indochina.

The Americans set up a competing union,

Force Ouvrière, financed by the CIA.

Meanwhile, the American Vice-President, Richard Nixon,

doesn't hesitate to brave the tropical rain in Indochina,

to meet the new Commander-in-Chief of the French forces, General Navarre.

The United States promise to increase their aide

and cover a large part of the war expenditures.

They favor the involvement of the Vietnamese

in their fight against the Communists.

The urgency is to prevent the Viet Minh from invading Laos, protected by France.

They must be stopped at Dien Bien Phu, a village about 190 miles from Hanoi,

in a valley with an old landing strip, the only one in the region.

A risky bet for General Navarre,

because the valley is surrounded by mountains.

Nonetheless, he launches the operation on November 20th, 1953.

(gunshots)

The French are welcomed by Viet Minh gunfire.

(cross-firing)

(speaking in foreign language)

Commander Bigeard, leader of the 6th Paratrooper battalion,

immediately asks for support from B-26s stationed in Hanoi.

(explosion)

Once the strip is secured and restored,

hundreds of men set up, in record time, positions and equipment,

in what will be called the entrenched camp of Dien Bien Phu.

The most powerful one of the entire war.

The airline strip, at the heart of the operation,

is protected by solid positions.

The resistance posts are given women's names

like Beatrice or Eliane,

and their hotspots bear numbers, such as Eliane 4.

Eleven thousand men are quickly gathered in this reduced perimeter.

The paratroopers of the Foreign Legion,

the Vietnamese battalions, the Algerians and Moroccans.

And a woman, a war correspondent named Brigitte Friang,

who has come for a few days, on her 30th birthday.

She is worried about the euphoria of all these soldiers.

On February 21st, 1954, she writes in her diary...

As Clemenceau said, "From victory to victory, we are headed for catastrophe!"

Is she the only one to be concerned?

Navarre himself dreads an increase in Chinese aide.

But, not in the immediate future.

Yet, the Viet Minh aren't the only ones he is facing.

The Chinese are already present.

Even if Giap, the Viet Minh military commander, and his general staff,

are the only ones on camera,

the Chinese generals are on hand to advise.

Together, they have put together the battle plan,

draw the French forces in by moving towards Laos.

Let them get set up, surround them and wipe them out.

This is the Dien Bien Phu ambush.

Chinese organization and Russian equipment have transformed the guerrilla

into what the Viet Minh call "the People's Army of Vietnam."

Modern, disciplined and well-equipped with 400,000 men.

In the beginning of 1954,

the Chinese help the Viet Minh to build a powerful offensive.

Mao wants a Communist victory in Indochina

to weigh-in on the talks opening in Geneva.

But he wants it to be Ho Chi Minh's victory.

Like the Russians, the Chinese advance covertly

to avoid an internationalization of the conflict.

It is the Viet Minh's responsibility to organize the logistics.

Thousands of poor souls will die of exhaustion

while digging a road for hundreds of Soviet Molotova trucks.

This contradicts Viet Minh propaganda,

always highlighting the famous bicycle of Dien Bien Phu.

But an artillery division, a regiment of anti-aircraft gunners

and tens of thousands of bombs

aren't transported on Peugeot and Manufrance bicycles.

They are transported on Molotova trucks,

traveling under cover of the jungle or at night, invisible to the French.

The Viet Minh sends this image around the world,

heroic fighters pulling their 105mm cannons, each weighing two tons.

In fact, these cannons can be dismantled.

Which General Giap himself confirms. He says,

"The French High Command believed

it was impossible for us to hoist the artillery up to the heights

which dominate the valley of Dien Bien Phu,

We took apart the cannons to transport them piece-by-piece

up to the hidden positions dug into the hillside.

The cannons are set up in bunkers carved in the rock, hidden from view.

On March 13th, 1954, the Viet Minh attack.

Their cannons are a nightmare for the French artillery,

that is incapable of reaching them.

French artillery commander, Lieutenant Colonel Piroth,

commits suicide after only two days.

The French are now counting on the planes

loaded onto the Arromanches aircraft carrier,

to bomb the Viet Minh and above all, to spray them with napalm,

the terrible, jellified petroleum.

The Naval pilots, like those of the Air Force,

will face a formidable Viet Minh barrier of anti-aircraft guns of Soviet origin.

French casualties are heavy.

Woe to the pilots who fall into the hands of those they call the Viets.

Daniel Robert, a naval air force pilot, Second Master,

will die of exhaustion on the long walk the Viet Minh inflicted on its prisoners.

On the other side, the French, in their combat holes,

now begin to wonder if even the Air Force can save them.

Six months after the installation of the entrenched camp,

darkness descends upon the men.

On March 14th, 1954,

the resistance post Beatrice is attacked and taken down

by the Viet Minh division 312.

(gunshot)

The Foreign Legion survivors flood the hub of the operation.

The injured must urgently be evacuated.

Finally,

the flight strip, in the heart of the entrenched camp,

is put out of order definitively.

Now the only way for the French

to receive supplies or reinforcements is by air drops.

But carried by the winds,

the parachutes carrying munitions and food

often end up in Viet Minh positions.

In any case, there are not enough planes.

The French government asks the Americans for planes.

But the Americans don't want to risk confrontation with the Chinese

and cover their tracks.

They supply transport aircraft bearing French cockades.

At the end of March 1954, France is desperate

and asks the United States to launch massive attacks on the Viet Minh.

The atomic bomb is even considered.

But this time, the Doomsday clock doesn't even move.

In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, on the Bikini atoll,

the Americans have just successfully tested their first operational H-bomb,

(explosion)

Seven hundred times more powerful than the one in Hiroshima.

The Russians don't yet have an equivalent.

The great Albert Einstein questions the survival of humanity.

EINSTEIN: On both sides, the means to mass destruction

are perfected with feverish haste,

behind the respective walls of secrecy.

Annihilation of any life on earth

has been brought within the range of technical possibilities.

NARRATOR: Is Dien Bien Phu really worth the risk?

End of April, 1954.

The Viet Minh artillery levels the French.

Giap launches his final attack.

The destruction of the French resistance posts

by the Soviet-built bombs and rocket launchers.

At six against one,

the Viet Minh's 20,000 fighters launch their offensive

against 3,000 defenders still in condition to fight.

Two thousand will die. One thousand will desert.

The French command post finally surrenders on May 7th, 1954.

The Communist send their most famous filmmaker,

the Soviet Roman Karmen, to immortalize this extraordinary event.

He reconstitutes the final moments of the last trenches,

and the captured tanks, damaged but quickly rebuilt.

Karmen emphasizes the American involvement

and the best spoil of war, a French General!

The garnison leader, Christian de la Croix de Castries,

The descendant of a renowned French family who gave Louis XVI a minister.

General de Castries is courteously interrogated by a Viet Minh interpreter,

who introduces him to the youngest soldier

and reassures him on the state of his general staff.

French officers receive fruit,

and the Communist newspaper, l'Humanité.

This is the victory that Mao desired,

to carry weight at the Geneva Convention.

In Geneva, on July 20th, 1954,

after four difficult months of negotiations, a cease-fire is signed

between the Viet Minh and the French delegates.

Ho Chi Minh's emissary Pham Van Dong,

the strongman of the Vietnamese Communist Party,

arrives just in time for the fall of Dien Bien Phu.

Victorious, he is certain at this precise moment,

that he will be able to get his hands on all of Indochina,

most of which is already controlled by his army.

But his main ally, Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, lets him down.

The French Parliament has just elected Pierre Mendès-France to negotiate.

This left-wing radical, opposed to the war in Indochina from the start,

understands that Zhou Enlai doesn't want to risk an American invasion.

Zhou Enlai accepts the West's proposal of two Vietnams.

The Chinese delegation's major obstacle is getting the Viet Minh Communists

to swallow the division of the country.

This hurdle is overcome with the promise to hold elections

on a possible reunification.

The Communists will have to settle for the territory north of the 17th parallel.

A non-Communist regime will be set up in the South.

The Soviet Molotov, also pressures Pham Van Dong,

the Viet Minh representative, to accommodate the French.

Moscow wants France to vote against the project

of a European Army, which is a worry to the Russians.

In a surprising statement from the socialist Mendès-France,

"If the war in Indochina,

which cost the equivalent of 2500 billion Euros,

did not bankrupt France, it's only because of the constant American aide."

Ho Chi Minh's popularity is, of course, at its peak.

He tells the soldiers,

"Thanks to the help of the Soviet Union and China,

the French government has recognized our country's independence.

Our victory is stupendous but not yet definitive."

More than ever, Ho Chi Minh needs his "People's Army of Vietnam".

And like in any army, the Supreme Leader hands out the medals.

Ho Chi Minh cannot yet leave his jungle annex to move to Hanoi.

The Geneva accords have put in place a timeframe

to regroup the Viet Minh in the North and the French in the South.

Since 1946, 200,000 Viet Minh fighters

and 30,000 French soldiers have been killed.

One hundred fifty thousand civilians are dead. The war in Indochina is over.

Washington, July 21st, 1954,

the day the Geneva agreements are signed.

The United States president holds a press conference.

Eisenhower says,

"If you set up a row of dominoes and knock the first one over,

what will happen to the last one

is certainty that it will go over very quickly."

Thus, Eisenhower exposes The Domino Theory,

the Cold War creed.

No other country can be allowed to fall into Communist hands

and contaminate its neighbors.

According to the Geneva Convention, all the prisoners are exchanged.

The Viet Minh prisoners must pledge their allegiance to communism.

Some soldiers from the French colonies come back converted,

wearing Ho Chi Minh's portrait.

How many of these North African soldiers will end up fighting against the French,

just a few months later in Algeria?

Behind what appears to be a cheerful departure from a "summer camp"...

hides a horrific, abominable reality.

(somber music playing)

On the boat bringing them back to France, these soldiers are far from imagining

the hostile welcome they will receive in Marseille.

Communist protests, insults and even hostility or indifference from others.

General Navarre, defeated in Dien Bien Phu, writes,

"The war in Indochina was not a national war.

It was a foreign business, only fought by the standing army.

The nation which never grasped the motives did not take part in it at all."

(ship horn blaring)

The Geneva Agreements gave the French three months to leave Hanoi.

A French non-commissioned officer writes,

"I am furious.

As a result of an agreement signed without any concern for details,

we are subject to all kinds of humiliation."

Like the French soldier here, chased by the Viet Minh.

Anyone and anything French must go.

The last soldiers from the Expeditionary Corps dismantle their bridges

and takeaway their dead.

(horses neighing)

They kill their mules rather than leave them for the Viet Minh.

Soon, only the colonial architecture will bear witness

to 70 years of French presence.

Everything is already covered

in red flags with a gold star.

(victorious music playing)

On October 9th, 1954,

the Viet Minh forces enter Hanoi.

Ho Chi Minh has dreamt of this moment his entire life.

He is 64 years old.

In Moscow, he was one of the best students at the Komintern,

the school of Communist determination and faith,

which today enables him to become the leader of North Vietnam.

However, he is still not at peace. He says,

"Now, we must do everything for reunification!

North Vietnam and South Vietnam are our territories!

Once our country is unified, our people will be free!"

The Vietnam War is about to begin.

The Cold War is far from ending.

And the hands of the Doomsday clock

have not yet finished their fateful countdown.