All language subtitles for World.War.II.in.Colour.S02E04.Victory.in.Europe.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

By early 1945,
Hitler's Third Reich

was entering its death throes.

In the west, Allied forces
had pushed to within

striking distance of the Rhine.

In the east,
the Red Army was crossing
the Polish border into Germany.

As the Allies battled
their way towards Berlin

from east and west, the Germans
fought them all the way.

But it was a hopeless task.

By May 1945,
Hitler would be dead

and Germany finally defeated.

February 1945,

and the Allied forces in
the west had assembled

near the Rhine for
the final push into Germany.

In the north
were the massed ranks

of Field Marshal Bernard
Montgomery's 21st Army Group.

To its south was General
Omar Bradley's 12th Army Group.

It included the US 3rd Army
commanded by General
George Patton.

On February 8th,
Montgomery's Army Group

launched a two-pronged assault
on German forces

defending the Rhine.

The northern prong had to fight
its way through the wooded
countryside.

The southern prong was delayed
when the Germans released

water from a series of dams,
flooding the surrounding area.

It would be over two weeks
before the two prongs

met up on the west bank
of the Rhine.

By early March 1945,

Montgomery's forces were
in control of some 60 miles

of the west bank of the river.

The next task was to cross it.

South of Montgomery,
Bradley's armies

were also moving eastwards

looking for a route
across the river.

On March 7th, 1945, they
reached the Rhine at Cologne.

But Hitler had ordered all
the bridges to be destroyed.

Then, as the US forces
explored further south,

they found one bridge
still intact

near the small town
of Remagen.

They made a dash for it,

brushing aside
German resistance.

Then, just as they
were about to cross it,

there was an explosion.

But, against the odds,
the bridge remained standing.

A small group of Americans
raced across it,

desperately cutting any
wires that looked like
demolition cables.

US commanders began to push
men across as fast as possible.

The Allies had at last
penetrated the German heartland.

In Berlin, news of the capture
of the bridge at Remagen

infuriated Hitler.

Five junior officers
were court-martialed.

Four were shot.

In addition, the long-suffering
German commander in the west,

Field Marshal Gerd von
Rundstedt, was sacked.

It was the second time
it had happened to him

in less than a year.

He was replaced
by veteran commander

Field Marshal Albert Kesselring,

who'd been in overall charge
in North Africa and Italy.

Over the next week,
the Germans launched

desperate air attacks to try and
destroy the bridge at Remagen.

None of them succeeded.

Then suddenly, on March 17th
while combat engineers

were repairing it, the bridge
unexpectedly collapsed.

Twenty-eight men
plunged to their deaths.

The first Allied thrust
into Germany had been blocked.

Meanwhile, further north,
Montgomery was preparing

the first full-scale Allied
crossing of the Rhine.

On March 23rd, 1945, he
launched an aerial bombardment

on German forces defending
the east bank of the river.

Some 200 RAF Lancaster bombers

virtually flattened
the town of Wesel.

Then British Commandos
in Buffalo amphibious
vehicles crossed.

They met little opposition
from the dazed German defenders.

Other divisions followed.

The crossing lasted all night.

The following day,
in the largest airborne
operation of the war,

17,000 men of British 6th

and US 17th Airborne Divisions

were dropped to seize key
positions east of the river.

They were met by heavy
German anti-aircraft fire.

A newsreel report
told the story.

In a short time,
hundreds of gliders make
their hazardous landings.

Their men beginning the fight
as soon as they land.

One glider has
its wing shot away

when only 50 feet
from the ground.

More than half the gliders
were destroyed or damaged
before landing.

But within hours,
the paratroopers

linked up with
Montgomery's land forces

and the Allied bridgehead
was secured.

It should have been,
for the ferociously
competitive Montgomery,

a moment of glory.

But he'd been upstaged.

The night before,
his great rival,

General Patton, had unexpectedly
crossed the Rhine

near Oppenheim and
had already entered Germany.

It was a sign
of the intense rivalry

between Montgomery
and American commanders

as they competed to be
the first into Germany.

Over the next few days, there
were more Allied crossings.

German defenses along
the Rhine collapsed.

In the north,
Montgomery now pushed

deeper into Germany
towards Munster.

In the south, Bradley's forces,
including Patton's 3rd Army,

pushed east towards
Marburg and Lauterbach.

The major German city
of Frankfurt Am Main

was circled and bypassed.

Die-hard German troops
fought back ferociously.

But by now there was no question
that the Germans were finished.

The only issue was when
they would realize it.

As the Western Allies battled
their way across west Germany,

Stalin's Red Army
in Poland prepared to launch

a major offensive on
Germany's eastern border.

Hitler's forces in the region
were poorly equipped

and ill-prepared
to repel an attack.

Supplies of weapons
had run so low

they were reduced to using
First World War rifles.

German intelligence estimated
the Red Army's infantry

outnumbered them 11 to one.

The Russians also had vastly
more tanks and artillery.

But the Germans had
nothing left.

Hitler's strategic reserve
had already been used up

on the Western Front.

On January 12th, 1945,
the Russian offensive

began with the usual
artillery barrage.

It stretched along
a 300 mile front.

A week later,
the Red Army drove into

the devastated remains
of Warsaw.

They then pushed westwards
towards the German border,

300 miles away.

To the south,
a second Soviet force

took the Polish town of Krakow

on January 18th.

As the Soviet forces now raced
westwards on a broad front

across Poland they left behind
pockets of German resistance

in cities like Poznan
and Breslau.

These would later be mopped up.

By the end of January 1945,

Soviet troops had crossed
the German border

and reached the River Oder.

The Russians were now just
an hour's drive east of Berlin.

For the veteran Russian
commander Georgy Zhukov

it had been a triumph.

He had traveled 300 miles
in just 14 days.

It was one of
the fastest and longest

Blitzkrieg advances
in military history.

Zhukov's troops now paused
to catch their breath

and bring up supplies.

They were soon joined by
a second group of Soviet armies

that dug in to their south
on the River Neisse.

Meanwhile, a third Russian
force penned the remnants

of the German armies
in East Prussia

into the Baltic port of
Konigsberg, Kaliningrad today.

Hitler had appointed
the SS chief, Heinrich Himmler,

to command his forces in
the neighboring region.

It was a sign of how
deeply he had come to
distrust his army generals.

But Himmler had no military
knowledge or experience.

During February 1945,

troops under Himmler's
command were torn apart

by Russian forces moving west.

This time Hitler could
have sent reserves.

A large force of German troops

still occupied
the Courland Peninsula

in neighboring Latvia.

But in another bizarre decision,

Hitler refused to allow it
to break out

and provide assistance.

He was still committed
to holding onto land,

his "Lebensraum",

however irrelevant or
wasteful it might now be.

It meant some
200,000 German troops

spent the final months
of the war doing nothing.

The Red Army now prepared for
its final assault on Berlin.

It lay less than 50 miles away.

In Germany,
the imminent Soviet invasion

caused mass panic among
the civilian population.

The Russians had seen,
first hand,

the horrors perpetrated by
the Germans in the Soviet Union.

They'd witnessed whole
towns and villages destroyed,

their inhabitants massacred.

They were now very clearly
looking for revenge.

There were horrific
tales of Russian rape,

murder and pillage.

In snow and bitter
sub-zero temperatures,

more than five million German
civilians on the Eastern Front

fled their homes and
flooded west to seek refuge.

Two million people
were evacuated by sea

from German-held ports
along the Baltic coast.

They were easy pickings
for Soviet submarines.

Twenty-four German passenger
ships were torpedoed.

They included the cruise liner
"Wilhelm Gustloff",

which had over 10,000
people on board.

Barely 1,000 survived,
the worst loss of life ever

in a single incident at sea.

Hitler's acting Chief-of-Staff,
General Heinz Guderian,

now urged the Fuhrer
to bring back any units

that could be spared from the
Western Front to defend Berlin.

Hitler agreed and brought back
the elite 6th SS Panzer Army.

But he didn't sent it to Berlin,

he sent it to Hungary.

He had become obsessed
with defending

Germany's last
remaining source of oil,

the Hungarian oil field
west of Lake Balaton.

It was an ill-considered
decision.

In Hungary, the Panzers
were hopelessly outnumbered
by the Russians.

To make matters worse,

the weather conspired
against them.

A sudden thaw turned
the ground into a sea of mud.

For several days
the Panzers struggled

to hold back
the advancing Russians.

But they were steadily
forced back into Austria.

Soon they were drawn
into the defense of Vienna

as the Red Army advanced
towards the Austrian capital.

But Sixth SS Panzer Army
was a spent force.

Its commander,
SS General Sepp Dietrich,

had no illusions.

"We call ourselves," he said,

"the 6th Panzer Army because
we have only six Panzers left."

On April 10th, the Red Army
swept them aside and
took Vienna.

As they did so,
the question now became,

who would be the first
to reach Berlin?

Would it be the Red Army
or the Western Allies?

The race for Berlin had
become not just a military

but a political issue.

By March 1945,

the Red Army was lined up
alone the River Oder,

awaiting a final assault
on Berlin.

It presented the Allied
military command in the west

with a dilemma.

Berlin was less than 300 miles
from their advanced positions.

Most Allied commanders
wanted to race to the city

to beat the Russians.

But at a conference
a month earlier

in the Black Sea port of Yalta,

the Allied leaders
had divided up Germany

into zones of influence.

Berlin was firmly inside
the Russian zone.

So Eisenhower was instructed
to tell his commanders

to ignore Berlin and spread out
to take the rest of the country.

On April 1st,
US troops surrounded

the German industrial
cities in the Ruhr.

German soldiers
occupying the area

put up a stiff resistance.

When, two weeks later,
the area fell,

more than 325,000 troops
were taken prisoner.

It was one of the largest
number of German prisoners

taken in the war so far.

The German commander,
the die-hard Nazi

Field Marshal Walter Model,
committed suicide.

Elsewhere in the country,
resistance was more patchy

and General Bradley's armies
stormed across Germany.

By April 18th, 1945,

the US forces
had punched a corridor

through to the Czech border,

splitting Germany in two.

Meanwhile, north of the Ruhr,

Montgomery's Canadian 1st Army

began the liberation of Holland.

The Dutch had
suffered horrendously

during the bitter
winter of 1944-1945.

The German occupying force
had deliberately taken

supplies of food and fuel from
the country to use elsewhere.

There had been widespread deaths
from starvation and cold.

The Dutch town of Arnhem was
seized on April 15th, 1945.

Progress was rapid and on
the following day, the Canadians

had liberated Groningen,
close to the Dutch north coast.

That left a German army
virtually intact

but surrounded near Amsterdam.

Soon afterwards,
a ceasefire was negotiated.

Allied aircraft now roared
over the Dutch countryside,

dropping food
and medical supplies.

At the same time,
the British 2nd Army,

also under Montgomery's command,

pushed fast across
the north German plain.

Osnabruck fell on April 4th.

The British were soon at
the German port of Bremen.

Here, there was fierce
German resistance.

It took nine days of
house-to-house fighting

before the port was secured.

Two days later,
Montgomery's British forces

reached the Elbe at Lauenburg.

As the Allies advanced
across Germany,

they now came across
horrific new evidence

of the Nazi's "Final Solution".

In early April 1945,
US troops overran

a concentration camp at Ohrdruf
near Weimar in central Germany.

A visibly shocked General
Eisenhower paid a visit.

The SS had evacuated
most of the prisoners

but they had left behind
piles of bodies.

Eight days later,
British troops overran

another concentration camp
at Belsen, north of Hanover.

Here they discovered
over 70,000 prisoners.

Thousands were already dead.

The remainder were starving
and disease-ridden.

A radio broadcast by the BBC
correspondent Richard Dimbleby

gave the horrific details.

I passed through the barrier

and found myself in
the world of a nightmare.

The living lay with their
heads against the corpses,

and around them moved
the awful, ghostly precession

of emaciated, aimless people

with nothing to do
and no hope of life.

Unable to move
out of your way,

unable to look at the
terrible sights around them.

It was as though they were
waiting their turn.

This is what the Germans did.

Let there be
no mistake about it,

did deliberately and slowly.

Meanwhile,
far to the south, in Italy,

the German front was
also starting to collapse.

The German forces were dug in
across the Appenine Mountains.

Field Marshal
Sir Harold Alexander,

the Allied Commander
in the Mediterranean,

now launched a spring offensive.

On April 9th, 1945,
British troops attacked

pulling German forces in
from along the front.

Five days later, US troops
also moved forward

and swiftly reached
the south bank of the River Po.

The Germans retreated
to the north bank.

But Hitler's commander
in Italy,

General Heinrich
von Vietinghoff,

had no illusions
that he could hold back

the Allied advance for long.

So he now made
approaches to the Allies

and on April 29th
surrendered unconditionally.

It would take effect
from May 2nd, 1945.

This was the first
formal surrender

of German forces
anywhere in Europe.

The war was moving swiftly
towards a conclusion.

Back in Germany,
American and Russian forces

had by now met up
on the Elbe near Leipzig.

The moment the world
has been awaiting so long,

when ally from West
meets ally from East.

The meeting was achieved
on April 26th when

a detachment of the American
69th Infantry Division,

under Major General Reinhardt
was rolled across the Elbe

to the Russians assembled
on the far bank.

The stage was set for
the final assault on Berlin.

Hitler was desperate.

He now turned to
the old and very young

for help in defending the city.

His "Thousand Year Reich"
was preparing for its final,

apocalyptic struggle
to survive.

On April 1st, 1945,

Joseph Stalin summoned
his top commanders to Moscow

to receive their orders
for the capture of Berlin.

Marshal Georgy Zhukov,

Russia's most
successful commander,

would make the main assault
from his bridgehead

on the Oder river.

A second group of Soviet armies,

under Marshal Ivan Konev,

would cross the River Neisse
further south

and push deep into Germany,

bypassing the German capital.

Between them they represented
a massive Soviet force

of over two and a half
million men.

They were equipped with 6,000
tanks and self-propelled guns

and 40,000 guns, mortars
and rocket launchers.

But the Germans were never
going to make it easy.

The city was defended by
about a million troops.

Many were dug into strong
defensive positions,

particularly along
the Seelow Heights -

a steep escarpment rising
out of the Oder Valley

and slap in front of
Zhukov's point of assault.

The defenders were a mixed bunch
of combat veterans,

SS fanatics
and inexperienced conscripts,

some as young as 14,

as well as elderly members of
the Volkssturm or People's Army.

By now, Hitler had
retired to a bunker

under the Reichschancellery
in Berlin.

He was a heavily medicated
and shambling figure,

who spent much of his time
issuing increasingly

unrealistic orders to
largely imaginary armies.

His public appearances
were becoming ever more rare.

But in early March,
he was persuaded to visit

some of the troops preparing
to defend the Oder line.

Seig Heil! Seig heil!

Later in the same month,
he emerged to inspect

a small group of
Hitler Youth soldiers.

It was his last ever appearance
before the cameras.

Then on April 13th, 1945,

the US President,
Franklin Roosevelt,
died of a heart attack.

He had been one of
the architects of the war,

responsible for
throwing America's might

behind the Allied offensive.

The Nazi propaganda minister,
Joseph Goebbels,

seized on the event to encourage

his increasingly
befuddled Fuhrer

to believe the Allied alliance
would collapse.

A German victory
could still be snatched

from the jaws of defeat.

But any illusions were
rapidly dispelled.

Three days
after Roosevelt's death,

Zhukov began
his assault on Berlin.

He had one gun for every
13 feet of the front.

But the German defense
had anticipated it

and pulled back
to avoid the bombardment.

As a result, when
Zhukov's infantry advanced,

they met unexpectedly
heavy resistance.

Desperate to retrieve
the situation,

Zhukov threw in his tanks.

But they too were soon
bogged down.

Meanwhile, to the south,

the assault by Konev's
second group of armies

had gone better.

His troops had crossed
the Neisse river

and were well on their way
to the next obstacle,

the River Spree.

Stalin stoked the rivalry
between his two commanders,

by authorizing Konev to swing
his tanks north towards Berlin.

He was only too happy to see
a race to take the city.

After three days
of savage fighting,

Zhukov's troops managed to enter
the eastern suburbs of Berlin.

At the same time,
Konev was approaching
the city from the south.

There was desperate
German resistance.

But on April 25th,
the Soviet armies met up

and the final assault
on Berlin began.

As the fighting moved on
from district to district,

civilians began to emerge
from the cellars.

But the Russians
took little notice

of the flags of surrender.

The rape of German women
and girls was widespread.

After three more days
of fighting,

the city's remaining defenders
were pinned down

in a narrow strip of central
Berlin less than two miles wide.

Every street and house
was contested.

Then, on the morning
of April 30th,

Soviet troops began
an assault on the Reichstag,

the German parliament building.

Stalin regarded it as
the symbol of Nazi power.

They were stopped by heavy fire.

So they blasted the building
at point blank range

with heavy artillery.

That evening,
the Russians stormed it.

Fighting raged
from room to room

and up and down
corridors and staircases.

It would take four hours
before the red flag

could be hoisted on
one of the towers.

The next morning,
on May 1st, 1945,

the event was restaged
for the cameras.

But by then,
Hitler was already dead.

On April 30th,
as fighting raged overhead,

the man whose insane ambitions
had embroiled the world in war,

laid waste a continent
and led to the extermination

of millions of Jews,
took his own life.

His long-time mistress,
Eva Braun,

who he'd married the day
before, died with him.

Their partially burned
bodies were buried

in the garden of
the Reichschancellery.

But the fighting continued.

Hitler had appointed
Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz

his successor,
and for the next few days

the new leadership attempted
to salvage something

from its nation's
cataclysmic defeat.

On May 1st, 1945,
the day after his death,

German people were told
that their Fuhrer

had "fallen in battle".

But they were told to
continue the fight

against the Bolshevik menace.

But the German leadership
was falling apart.

In Berlin, Josef Goebbels
and Martin Bormann

tried to negotiate a city-wide
ceasefire with the Russians.

But the Russian commander,
Marshal Zhukov,

demanded unconditional surrender

of all German forces, everywhere.

It was more than Goebbels
and Bormann could deliver.

Fighting in Berlin continued.

Later that evening,
Goebbels and his wife

killed their six children

and then committed suicide
themselves.

That same night
Bormann disappeared.

Eventually, in the 1990s,

DNA testing confirmed that
a body found in Berlin was his.

The next morning
Berlin surrendered.

By mid-afternoon all fighting
in the city had stopped.

Across the country, the pace
of the German surrender

now gathered momentum.

The following day,
Doenitz sent a delegation

to the British commanding
officer, Field Marshal
Montgomery.

He offered to surrender
all German forces
in northern Germany.

Montgomery sent a reply saying

he didn't have the authority
to accept a surrender

on behalf of the Americans
or the Russians.

He could only accept
the surrender of those
troops fighting him.

Doenitz had no choice but to
agree to Montgomery's terms.

But that left Germany still
fighting in the rest of
the country.

Doenitz now sent another
delegation to General
Eisenhower,

the Supreme Allied Commander,

to discuss a peace deal
with the West.

But it carefully
avoided any reference

to a surrender to the Russians.

Eisenhower rebuffed him

and insisted that only
the unconditional surrender

of all German forces
was acceptable.

Once again, Doenitz
was forced to back down.

At 2:41 in the morning
of May 7th, 1945,

at Eisenhower's
headquarters in France,

General Alfred Jodl,
Hitler's chief of operations

throughout the six years of war,

signed a document of
unconditional surrender.

Eisenhower's Chief-of-Staff,
Walter Bedell Smith,

signed for the Western Allies.

General Ivan Susloparov
signed for the Soviet Union.

The only member of
the Allies' side not happy

with the arrangement was Stalin.

The Soviet Union
had suffered too much

to miss out on its own
humiliation of the Germans.

So Stalin
countermanded Susloparov

and declared Russia would only
accept a surrender in Berlin.

It meant that the following day,
Hitler's former Chief-of-Staff,

Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel,

signed a second surrender
document to satisfy Stalin.

Marshal Zhukov signed
for the Soviet Union,

with Air Chief-Marshal
Sir Arthur Tedder

signing on behalf of
the Western Allies.

In January 1943,
the late President Rosevelt

and Premier Churchill
met in Casablanca.

There they pronounced
the formula

of unconditional surrender
for the Axis powers.

In Europe, that formula
has now been fulfilled.

Across Europe
and the United States

crowds began to celebrate
the end of the war in Europe.

From now on, the day after
the German surrender,

May 8th, would be known as
VE-Day - Victory in Europe.

But as the celebrations
continued,

many were aware of two,
very sobering, issues.

In the east,
Japan was still fighting.

And in Europe,
the continent lay in ruins

and huge problems
needed to be solved.

Millions of Germany's
concentration camp victims

and slave laborers would need
help to rebuild their lives.

Millions of captured
German fighting men

had to be screened before
being allowed to go home,

to identify and arrest
major war criminals.

The SS was a particular target.

It had been responsible
for some of the worst
atrocities of the war.

Leading Nazis
like Hermann Goering,

head of Hitler's air force,
were rounded up

and paraded in front
of the cameras.

Other top Nazis arrested

included civilian leaders,
like Albert Speer,

and military leaders,
like Jodl and Doenitz.

They would be put on trial in
the German city of Nuremberg

for crimes against humanity.

You must plead
guilty or not guilty.

Rudolph Hess.

You must plead guilty
or not guilty.

Nein!

That will be entered
as a plea of not guilty.

The Nazi leadership received
sentences ranging from

the death penalty
to ten years in prison.

Goering committed suicide
before he could be hung.

Two months after
the German surrender,

the Allies met in the Berlin
suburb of Potsdam.

Germany was divided into
four zones of occupation -

Soviet, British,
American and French.

Berlin, although deep
in the Soviet zone,

was parceled up between
the Allies in the same way.

The peoples of Europe would
also find themselves divided.

Some would now live under the
control of the Western Allies,

some under Communist Russia.

But before any of this
could be faced,

there was still the war
in the Pacific to be won.