Original subtitles

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- MALE NARRATOR: December 7, 1941...

the turmoil of World War ll enters its 27th month.

Japanese troops storm Shanghai.

German armies stand at the gates of Moscow,

leaving 6 1/2 million casualties in their wake.

Nazi Germany has mainland Europe in its grip.

Under siege,

Britain hangs on by a thread.

Three-thousand miles away,

the United States remains at peace.

Seventy-six percent of her citizens

support neutrality.

At 7:55 a.m., the peace is shattered.

Three hundred sixty Japanese warplanes

descend on Pearl Harbor.

World War ll has come to America.

This is America's war as never seen before...

from the unique vantage point of space.

Witness the key battles unfold...

and the military strategies behind them,

in stunning detail.

Revealed are the political alliances,

the global battle for resources,

and the astounding awakening

Of American military and manufacturing might

that will determine the outcome

of the greatest conflict ever fought.

-:

- NARRATOR: The unprovoked Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor

will send shock waves across the globe,

but America has feared a strike for months.

Since 1931, Japan's imperial ambitions

have grown bolder and bolder.

First, Manchuria is invaded,

then China itself.

When France falls to Nazi Germany in 1940,

Japan seizes control of French Indochina.

The US response is rapid.

Japan's financial assets are frozen

and an oil embargo is imposed.

The message is clear--

withdraw from Indochina or be economically crushed.

- After the embargo,

Japan was faced with two choices--

stop territorial expansion--

give into the demands of the Allies--

or go to war.

- NARRATOR: Japan chooses War.

In the words of Prime Minister Tojo,

"it is either glory or decline."

It is imperative that they make

the first, decisive strike.

- The Japanese knew they were never gonna go

toe-to-toe with the United States

in a long Naval war in the Pacific.

They knew they didn't have the economic might--

the military might-- but it was a calculation

that they could administer a knock-out blow

to the capital ships of the US Pacific Fleet.

- If you could destroy the Pacific Fleet,

the ability of the Americans to respond to anything

for many months would be taken away.

So the strike at Pearl Harbor

was not just a strike at a symbol of American power.

It was American power in the Pacific.

- NARRATOR: What American intelligence cannot see

is revealed from space.

Admiral Yamamoto's fleet departs Japan

on the longest assault in history.

Avoiding shipping lanes and landmass,

they arrive unseen,

275 miles from their target.

It's the perfect vantage point--

beyond the range of America's defensive radar,

but at the optimum strike distance

for its force of 414 cutting-edge aircraft,

the jewel in the crown...

the Mitsubishi Zero.

- MAN 1: It's faster than anything

that they've used before.

It's incredibly maneuverable and it has extreme range.

But while the technology was pretty good,

what mattered at Pearl Harbor was the man behind it.

It was the pilot.

The Japanese pilots have already been at war for years,

so they're well-trained crews.

You add on top of that,

they'd been planning that attack for a long period of time.

So they'd been running war games, simulating it,

going through the action again and again,

so that, basically, many of them talked

about how they could have done it going in blind.

- NARRATOR: At 7:55 a.m., the first wave of bombers

swoop from the sky.

- [plane engine whines]

- On the deck of USS Arizona

is Don Stratton.

- We knew right away that there were Japanese planes,

and we knew that they were bombing Ford Island,

and something was radically wrong.

- [plane engines zooming]

- DON: Planes were strafing and dive-bombing,

and it was just a horrible experience

and a horrible sight.

- [eerie music, bombs exploding]

- DON: It was a high-altitude bomber,

dropped like a 2,000-lb bomb.

I mean, it just devastated everything in its path,

and the concussion

and the smoke and the fire

was horrendous.

- [eerie music continues]

- It just was like...

you'd lost your home.

- NARRATOR: Of eight battleships at anchor

the Arizona, Oklahoma,

West Virginia, and California are sunk--

the rest severely damaged.

In 68 minutes,

Japan has crippled the heart of America's Pacific Fleet.

- From a Japanese perspective,

the attack on Pearl Harbor succeeded

beyond the most optimistic expectations.

When you consider the losses

that the Japanese suffered in this attack,

it was essentially nothing.

- NARRATOR: The Japanese lose 64 men

to 3,649 US casualties--

a human damage ratio of 57 to 1.

But Japan's margin of victory

hides two major flaws in the attack.

- The Japanese failed to systemically attack

the oil fields--

the oil storage tanks at Pearl Harbor.

If they'd spent one more sortie

taking out those oil tanks,

they would have crippled the whole Pacific Fleet,

which wouldn't have had the fuel supplies to keep going.

- NARRATOR: More significant are the ships

the Japanese fail to target.

- PROF. KENNEDY: The American aircraft carriers

were absent from Pearl Harbor

at the time of the Japanese attack.

And as things evolved very quickly,

it became clear that the aircraft carrier

was destined to become the most significant naval asset

for either side in the Pacific war,

and the American carriers were untouched.

- NARRATOR: Oil supplies and air domination--

two factors that will dictate the fate of World War ll,

and Japan fails to damage either...

Instead, it has awoken the full wrath

of the sleeping American giant.

- [dramatic orchestral music]

- DR. CRANE: Pearl Harbor infuriated the American people.

It also infuriated the American military--

massive casualties, destruction of most of the Pacific Fleet.

If you wanted to do one thing to unite a country

that before this had been rather divided

about what to do about the war, Pearl Harbor was it.

- This was like a lightning rod

throughout the American population.

No longer was President Roosevelt

limited in his options.

He had a United States population

that was angry and unified

and desired revenge against Japan.

- NARRATOR: Her era of isolationism is over.

America is at war

and begins its rise to become

the most powerful nation on the planet.

Washington calculates victory

will cost $300 billion--

$4.4 trillion in today's money--

over 1 1/2 times the total US federal budget.

The government can raise half through increased taxes.

For the rest, it must turn to the public.

- MAN 2: To raise $300 billion

was then viewed as an insurmountable challenge,

because basically we had to get

half of the population of the United States

to buy bonds.

And what we were saying is we're in World War ll,

we're in this to win,

It's a fight of good versus evil,

and you on an individual level

are gonna make a difference.

- NARRATOR: To guarantee success,

the ad men of New York recruit

America's most potent propaganda asset.

- We had the Hollywood machine.

America had mass-marketed movies.

They knew the power of Hollywood.

They knew the power of celebrities.

- NARRATOR: Over 300 movie icons

join the "Stars Over America" campaign

crisscrossing the nation.

Chicago... two huge celebrity rallies

sell over $15 million in bonds.

New York... a 3-way baseball game

generates $56 million.

By the end of the war,

bonds campaigns raise $187.5 billion.

- BOB: To get everybody aligned behind one goal

and make the transaction is--is huge.

- NARRATOR: America and its beleaguered Allies

are going to need every cent.

Four days after Pearl Harbor,

Nazi Germany declares war on the United States.

She now faces two vast and battle-hardened powers

on two fronts.

- MAN 3: When America entered the war,

it looked as if the military aggressors were going to win.

- NARRATOR: Seen from space, America's peril is clear.

Her fleet is in disarray,

and her Pacific assets at the mercy of a rampant Japan.

On the other side of the planet,

her strongest military ally,

Great Britain,

is buckling under siege from Nazi Germany.

America is at the epicenter

of the greatest conflict in history.

Roosevelt must make the biggest call of any US presidency--

which enemy to engage first.

- DR. CRANE: Franklin Delano Roosevelt decided

that Germany was the one that could take down

our closest friends around the world.

They had to make sure that Britain survived.

- Keeping Britain afloat was essential

to the long-term prospects of victory.

It stood as a large aircraft carrier

that would enable an invasion onto the continent.

If Britain fell under Nazi domination,

the challenge would be almost insurmountable.

- NARRATOR: For Roosevelt,

the future of Great Britain is the future of the war.

But after 17 months of fighting alone,

its survival rests on a knife edge.

Isolated, Britain's only hope

is to keep her supply routes open--

a fragile lifeline German Admiral Doenitz

seeks to destroy.

- Britain depended on the import

of 5 million tons of stuff every month.

German Admiral Doenitz argued very persuasively

that if we can subtract a million tons a month,

we will bring Britain to its knees.

- NARRATOR: Doenitz's lethal weapon is the U-boat.

Capable of traveling thousands of miles submerged

and armed with a deadly cocktail

of deck guns, mines and torpedoes,

it is the perfect weapon

to starve Britain into submission.

- When they attack, they're sending

over 9,000 tons of supplies

to the bottom of the ocean

with 1 munition--1 torpedo.

And when it detonates, it creates

this void underneath the vessel

that creates the vessel to collapse

- It's the difference between being stabbed

and someone breaking your back.

It's a killer.

- NARRATOR: Churchill introduces naval convoys

to protect the merchant fleets.

Doenitz's response is devastating.

- PROF. WAWRO: Admiral Doenitz introduced this thing

called "rudel" tactic-- wolf pack tactic.

A rudel is a pack of animals,

and instead of approaching singly,

as submarines had done in the past,

the Germans would have their U-boats

strung out in these long patrol lines

and then they would use radio signals to congregate in a pack

and overwhelm the defenses of the convoy.

- The results are devastating.

When you get caught by a pack of these,

you might lose half or more of the convoy.

- NARRATOR: In 12 months,

900 ships are sunk.

Only 29 U-boats are destroyed.

It's a war of attrition Britain is losing fast.

- Winston Churchill knows one big thing in 1940--

that for Britain to be able to fight this war,

it needs American help-- it can't do it alone.

- NARRATOR: Churchill tirelessly lobbies Roosevelt

for American support.

Though officially neutral, Roosevelt cuts a deal.

The US give 50 destroyers to Britain

to keep it in the fight, but at a price.

In return, Britain hands over

eight of its overseas bases to America and dismantles

its preferential trading system with its colonies.

- DR. PORTER: It was a very mixed deal for Britain,

because on the one hand, it helps Britain fight the war.

They couldn't have done it without American support--

materially.

On the other hand, it accelerates

the collapse of the British Empire--

makes the Empire more and more unaffordable.

For Winston Churchill, that's a very painful deal,

but one that probably has to be made.

- NARRATOR: December 1941

America enters the war.

Its first act of aggression is to join Britain

in the Battle of the Atlantic...

a strategy that meets with disaster.

- PETER: When America enters the war,

the Battle of the Atlantic actually takes a turn--

worse for the Allies.

The amount of Allied shipping that's sunk

goes up by these astronomical amounts.

- NARRATOR: By mid-1942,

2,703 Allied ships are sunk--

a U-boat kill ratio of 36 to 1.

It's an unsustainable rate of loss.

Even with America fighting alongside,

the liberty of Britain and the freedom of Europe

hang by a thread.

Mid-1942...

Britain remains in the stranglehold

of the German U-boat menace.

American ships coming to its aid

are being destroyed at alarming rates.

To reverse their fortunes,

the Allies must gain the upper hand

in the intelligence war.

- DR. CRANE: The most critical factor

in the Battle of the Atlantic was the exchange of information

between the Americans and the British.

It maximized both the technological

and the intellectual capabilities of both sides.

- NARRATOR: The precedent for this vital collaboration

is the "Tizard Mission,"

15 months before the Pearl Harbor attack.

With Nazi invasion seemingly inevitable,

Henry Tizard,

Head of the British Aeronautical Committee,

persuades Churchill to gift America

every scientific innovation Britain holds,

in exchange for access to US production lines.

The blueprints are packed into a single trunk.

Embarking from Britain, it reaches Washington DC

in September 1940.

- DR. PORTER: That box was described

by one American official

as the most important cargo that ever reached its shores.

- NARRATOR: The trunk contains the memorandum

on the feasibility of the atomic bomb,

designs for jet engines, rockets, superchargers,

gyroscopic gun sights, submarine detection devices,

self-sealing fuel tanks, plastic explosives,

and perhaps the most important invention of World War ll...

a working Magnetron Number 12,

an advancement in radar technology

a thousand times more effective

than the best American counterpart.

- This was revolutionary.

You can put it into an aircraft, you can put it on a ship,

then you can take that technology

and take it anywhere on the battle space.

- NARRATOR: American assembly lines

begin mass-producing the device

that will change the course of the war.

Its first challenge...

to close the deadly Mid-Atlantic gap.

From space, the boneyard of Allied shipping

is startlingly revealed.

- DR. CRANE: You can fly missions from the United States,

you can fly missions from Britain,

but you can't quite close everything,

and you've got the mid-Atlantic gap in the middle.

And the U-Boats realize that and concentrate in that area.

- NARRATOR: By April 1943,

3,450 Allied ships have been lost.

But new carriers are launched,

loaded with long-range aircraft,

fitted with the Magnetron Number 12,

and the gap begins to close.

- It turns the Atlantic from this wide mass

in which the U-boat can hide in

to "No I can find you out there."

- NARRATOR: As British code breakers

crack the German Enigma code,

the final piece of the Allied resurgence

falls into place.

And the tactical and technological advantage

is exploited in the convoy battle known as ONS 5.

- PROF. OVERY: Among all the convoy battles,

one of the most important was ONS 5 in April '43,

and it's important, really, because it demonstrated

clearly, I think, how far the Allies had gone.

- NARRATOR: Forty-two ships of the slow-bound ONS 5 convoy

leave Liverpool for Canada.

For Doenitz,

it is a perfect target.

- Doenitz is feeling this great sense of urgency,

like he needs to sink more and more tons of shipping.

And he actually presses his luck in this battle.

- NARRATOR: The first wave of U-boats

sink 13 Allied ships.

But as thick fog falls, the advantage switches.

Armed with the German codes and advanced radar,

the Allies strike back with impunity.

- PROF. WAWRO: Doenitz fights longer than he should,

brings in more U-boats than he should,

which are then, in fact, chewed up by the convoy.

After the battle, Doenitz says,

"The Battle of the Atlantic is over,"

because he sees how expert

the British and Americans have become

at detecting U-boats,

chasing them down, and killing them.

- NARRATOR: With ONS 5,

the Battle of the Atlantic is all but won.

And the astonishing transformation

of American industry

can start to dictate the fortunes of war.

With the money and the might to out-produce the Axis,

America embarks

on an unprecedented industrial and social revolution.

- MAN 4: You had a war industrial board.

They looked around the United States and said,

"This particular place is gonna be

where we're gonna build tanks-- we're gonna build planes here."

And so the population went there.

- It's as if in World War ll, somebody had picked up

the North American continent at the Eastern seaboard

and raised it and tipped it,

and everything--people, money, machines--

everything just slid westward across the continent.

- NARRATOR: The population of California swells by 53%,

Oregon by 40%,

and Washington by 37%.

Nineteen million women

become the core of the American labor force,

working in war factories,

transportation, and agriculture across the nation.

Manufacturers of all sizes

become a critical part of the war effort.

- COL. FARRELL: Typewriter manufacturers,

canned goods manufacturers-- they're all converted.

They're all mobilized, if you will, to support the war effort.

- DR. CRANE: Car factories are turned into making bombers

and refrigerator factories are turned into making armored cars.

- Not for nothing, it's called "the production miracle."

- NARRATOR: American industry produces

87,000 ships and landing craft,

100,000 tanks and armored vehicles,

300,000 aircraft,

2 million trucks,

20 million rifles and small arms,

and 41 billion rounds of ammunition--

enough to kill the population of the world

17 times over.

Yet America's decision to engage Germany first

comes at a price.

- DR. CRANE: The Japanese centrifugal offensive

was a shock to everybody.

They seemed unstoppable.

- NARRATOR: Japan advances through the Pacific unchecked,

capturing American, British and Dutch territories

in a string of decisive victories.

Within six months,

they have near complete control

of the Pacific theatre.

- They captured territories for two main reasons.

The first one was for resources.

The Dutch East Indies provide oil and rubber,

which they're going to need to keep their war machine going.

They also knew America would eventually respond,

and so a lot of the territories

were going to be barriers to set up against the Americans

when they came back across.

- NARRATOR: April 1942... America strikes back.

Launching from the US Hornet,

16 B-25's kick-start the next phase of war...

by bombing Tokyo.

- DR. CRANE: For the Americans, the raid

is a chance to strike back,

even though it didn't do very much material damage.

But it had a major impact on Japanese leadership.

The military was embarrassed they'd allowed their--

the emperor to be threatened like that.

- NARRATOR: The Japanese respond, setting their sights

on America's most westerly Pacific base.

From space, their strategy is clear--

seizing the Island of Midway

will extend their defensive perimeter

deep into American waters.

- And their plan is, "We are going to surprise the Americans.

"We're gonna seize Midway, and they are going to be forced

to come out and fight us on our terms."

The problem for the Japanese is

the Americans already know they're coming.

The story of the American code breakers

is one of these lesser-known

but perhaps one of the most important parts of the story

of why America wins in the Pacific.

- NARRATOR: From June 1939,

the US Navy Combat Intelligence Unit

under the command of Joseph Rochefort

has been attempting to decipher JN-25,

the Japanese naval code.

Using punch card technology and mathematical analysis,

they work around the clock.

In the lead-up to Midway,

the decisive breakthrough is made.

- PETER: They break the code.

They knew the Japanese were coming.

They knew where they were coming to Midway.

They even knew when they were coming.

- NARRATOR: US Intelligence finally grasps

the full scale of the Japanese attack.

The situation is highly precarious.

With a weakened fleet

and up against a battle-hardened enemy force,

Midway is the moment of truth.

- PROF. OVERY: The only way the Midway battle

would work for America

was to have their carriers in the right place

and be able to strike the Japanese

at just the right time.

- The Americans have gotta get in the first major shot.

- NARRATOR: At 4:00 a.m.,

Japanese bombing of Midway begins.

What Admiral Nagumo can't see is 275 miles away,

safely outside the range of Japanese radar,

4 US carriers

are poised for a counterattack.

Only at 7:40 a.m.

does a Japanese reconnaissance plane

spot the US fleet.

- DR. CRANE: Battles are often decided by minutes and seconds,

and Midway is filled with important minutes and seconds.

When the late spotter plane

finally finds the American fleet,

Admiral Nagumo is hit with this dilemma about,

"Do I outfit my aircraft for bombs to bomb Midway,

"as they already are, or do I stop,

"take those bombs off and put on torpedoes

so they can go after the American fleet?"

And whatever decision he comes upon

is gonna have a major impact on the rest of the battle.

- PROF. OVERY: While they were doing all of this, of course,

there was a long, critical waiting point,

with aircraft on the decks,

huge quantities of explosives around.

For the Japanese this was the riskiest moment.

- NARRATOR: It is the moment America has been waiting for--

41 Douglas torpedo bombers descend for the attack.

- DR. CRANE: But the American torpedo bombers show up

unescorted, completely vulnerable.

They're shot down like fish in a barrel.

They just don't survive.

- NARRATOR: Thirty-five out of 41 planes are lost.

Not a single bomb hits the Japanese fleet.

It seems that Japan has struck the decisive blow.

- And then all of a sudden, the dive bombers come in,

and the whole world changes.

- NARRATOR: A second wave

of American dive-bombers descends.

- DR. CRANE: There's the Japanese fleet

with no air cover and the decks covered

with airplanes and torpedoes and bombs.

They're just torches to be lit,

and the dive-bombers will come in,

and three Japanese aircraft carriers

are destroyed in minutes.

- NARRATOR: As the final Japanese carrier is destroyed,

along with 250 elite Japanese pilots,

the balance of power

has dramatically swung in America's favor.

- PROF. WAWRO: We had seven new carriers under construction.

They had one carrier under construction.

So they were never gonna be able to replace these carriers.

And what it meant was they would be

thrown back on the defensive for the duration of the war.

- NARRATOR: In a global theatre of war,

control of the air is proving to be

one of the determining factors for victory.

On the other side of the planet,

America's first strikes on Nazi Germany

are coming from the sky.

The major cities in Europe

are the new front lines of war.

- [bombs whistle]

- NARRATOR: Six months on from Pearl Harbor

and the battlefronts of World War ll

are at a tipping point.

America and her allies have stalled

the momentum of German aggression

in the Battle of the Atlantic

and halted Japanese territorial expansion

in the decisive victory at Midway.

And in June 1942,

the first American bombers arrive in Great Britain.

- [suspenseful orchestral music]

- NARRATOR: They join a brutal battle for air supremacy

that has raged over Europe since the outbreak of war.

Germany's Luftwaffe squadrons draw first blood,

bringing Poland,

then the Low Countries and France

to their knees.

- DR. CRANE: The fall of France in 1940

really seemed to vindicate

the superiority of the Blitzkrieg.

There's big concerns that the Germans may be unstoppable.

- NARRATOR: With Nazi domination almost complete,

Hitler turns the Luftwaffe

against his last remaining opposition...

Great Britain.

It is imperative that its Royal Air Force holds.

- The stakes in the Battle of Britain, for the British,

are survival.

- NARRATOR: July 10, 1940...

the Battle of Britain begins.

The Luftwaffe pounds British defenses and its major cities.

- [machine gun firing]

- The RAF adapts very quickly

and begins to shoot down more German bombers and fighters

than the Germans can replace.

- NARRATOR: Nineteen-hundred German aircraft

are destroyed in 113 days.

It is an unsustainable rate of attrition.

- So Hitler's forced to cancel the battle of Britain and begin

massing forces for an invasion of the Soviet Union.

- NARRATOR: The Battle of Britain

is Hitler's first major defeat of World War ll.

Air power is the new orthodoxy of modern warfare.

Roosevelt orders vast squadrons of aircraft to be manufactured.

At Ford's Willow Run plant in Michigan,

an astounding 8,500 bombers are produced.

Over 127,000 bombers are made...

13,600 are transported to British airfields.

The assault on Germany

can now enter a new phase of intensity.

- DR. CRANE: The arrival of the 8th Air Force in Britain

had a number of impacts-- number one,

it guaranteed that the Germans wouldn't be able to launch

another major attack against Britain the way they had

in the Battle of Britain.

There was just too many Allied airplanes there.

It also was a boost to British morale

that the Americans were finally coming en masse.

- NARRATOR: But the American airmen are entering

a new kind of warfare--

where sheer weight of numbers is no guarantee of success.

- CHRIS: The amount of weapons that are being thrown up

to stop the bombers is having an enormous toll.

The survivability rate is going 11 to 1 to the infantry.

It's actually safer to be an infantryman

on the ground in Europe in a foxhole

than it is to be in this, uh,

advanced machine flying high above.

- NARRATOR: After losing 1,135 bombers,

the RAF switches to nighttime raids.

But in the dark,

only 1.5% of all bombs

fall within 3 miles of the target.

- The Americans decide that it's too inefficient,

that you had to do it in daylight

where you could see the target.

They thought, "We've got more heavily defended bombers.

"We think this Will Work."

- NARRATOR: American confidence is based on the B-17,

the most sophisticated war machine of its time.

- CHRIS: The B-17 is an amazing aircraft.

They call it the flying fortress--well, why?

It has 13 50-caliber machine guns

arrayed all around it to give it a bubble of fire.

You have fire coming out the front,

you have fire coming out the flanks,

below, above, and in the rear.

- COL. FARRELL: It was believed that it could fly

in broad daylight, unescorted by fighter aircraft,

deep into the heart of enemy territory

and unleash an amazing amount of ordnance

on enemy targets.

- NARRATOR: With unswerving faith in the B-17,

the American 8th Air Force plan a dual raid

to destroy the heart of German aviation production.

- DR. CRANE: The Schweinfurt- Regensburg Mission

was seen as the way to really prove

that this precision bombing idea would work.

They seemed to have picked out

the key industries they could knock out

that would cripple the German economy.

They had the battle plan, they thought,

that would get them to the target.

- NARRATOR: Two squadrons of B-17's

commanded by Colonel LeMay and Brigadier General Williams

prepare to attack simultaneously,

splitting German defenses.

Almost immediately, the plan begins to unravel.

- It was a foggy day in England. LeMay got his guys up.

The other bomber division couldn't get up.

The decision was made that they couldn't land LeMay's guys.

They sent them on.

When the Regensburg mission goes in on its own,

the bombers were sitting ducks, not only for flak,

but for the Germans that were gathering

from all over the whole defense zone.

The Schweinfurt leg then comes in

enough time after the Regensburg leg

so the Germans can refit and rearm,

and it goes through the same mauling.

- NARRATOR: Sixty US bombers are destroyed,

double the losses ever suffered in a single raid.

- PETER: The problem for the Allies was we took

the marketing of the flying fortress seriously.

We took the idea that it could protect itself

with its own machine guns

and not have to worry about escorted seriously,

And that didn't work.

- NARRATOR: The flaw is startlingly clear from above--

the lack of fighter escort protection.

The fighters have limited range

and can only protect the bombers partway to their targets,

leaving them dangerously exposed.

- Then we get the real game changer.

We get the P-51.

The P-51 was an amazing fighter

on so many different levels,

but the real key is it had amazing range.

It went with the American bombers

all the way in, all the way out.

That meant that we could now take down the German defenses.

We could create true air dominance,

and that's when you see the Luftwaffe

essentially swept from the skies.

- DR. CRANE: Once the Luftwaffe's destroyed,

and we have pretty much free rein over the German skies,

we really start to take down the oil industry.

- NARRATOR: Oil... the single most essential commodity

of World War ll.

- COL. FARRELL: Possession of large supplies of oil

was the only way to victory.

Without oil, mechanized armies could not fight.

- NARRATOR: From space,

the battle for the world's oil reserves is revealed.

America is self-sufficient.

Its oil fields are the cornerstone

of Allied military strength.

In contrast,

Germany's stockpile of 20 million barrels

is rapidly running out.

- PROF. OVERY: One of the weaknesses

in the German war effort

was they couldn't get access to unlimited quantities of oil.

They then decided to use synthetic oil,

and synthetic oil was really critical

for making up that difference.

- NARRATOR: Synthetic Oil,

produced from coal and natural gas,

is the lifeblood of Hitler's mechanized forces.

As Allied air raids

cripple Germany's synthetic fuel production,

Hitler's best hope is to seize the Caucasus oil fields.

Deep inside Russia, the two sides clash

in the bloodiest fighting history has ever seen.

At stake is the outcome of World War ll.

September 1940...

while America remains neutral,

Hitler has Mainland Europe in his grip.

But in the skies over Britain,

the Nazis' relentless westward advance is halted.

It is a defeat that forces Hitler

to turn to his attention towards his ultimate goal--

the conquest and annihilation of the Soviet Union.

- COL. FARRELL: The Soviet Union represented

the nexus of everything that Hitler hated.

He saw it as a bastion of communism and Judaism.

And if it were not defeated,

ultimately the Soviet Union

would destroy Germany and destroy the Aryan race.

- There was also just sheer pragmatism here.

The Soviet Union was the "gross raum wirtschaft,"

the great economic space.

They needed the raw materials,

the oil, the food,

and by annexing the Soviet Union,

they'd be able to sustain a long war

and fend off any British- American attacks.

- NARRATOR: June 22, 1941...

Hitler launches "Operation Barbarossa,"

the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Across a 1,800-mile front,

Hitler's army of over 4 million Wehrmacht troops

surges forward,

destroying everything in its path.

- COL. FARRELL: This was the largest army

that had been assembled in the history of world.

And the Germans demonstrated

an operational and tactical mastery

that the Soviets simply could not match.

The barbarity is almost incomprehensible.

Following the front-line troops,

there were the special action squads.

Their purpose was to identify and murder

political leaders

and ultimately Jews in the occupied areas.

- NARRATOR: The slaughter of a million Soviets

is the merciless testing ground for the Holocaust.

The SS accelerate the genocide of Jews

and others seen as undesirable.

Over 9 million are slaughtered.

- COL. FARRELL: This was industrialized mass murder.

This was something that--

that hadn't even appeared in the middle ages.

- NARRATOR: By the winter of 1941,

their brutal advance has brought them

to the brink of victory.

Leningrad is under siege,

and German panzer divisions are at the gates of Moscow.

Seeking a devastating tactical and ideological blow,

Hitler turns his attentions towards Stalingrad.

- PROF. WAWRO: Stalingrad was an important target for Hitler

because he knew by taking it, he would insult Stalin.

He also knew he would force Stalin to try to take it back,

and he would be able to wear down the Red Army.

But also it was an important city because it would permit him

to pivot south into the Caucasus

and take all these oil-producing regions

and make Germany self-sufficient in petroleum.

- NARRATOR: For both sides,

the stakes for the Battle for Stalingrad are immense.

- COL. FARRELL: For Hitler to fail at Stalingrad

would be an enormous blow to the Nazi myth.

It would be an enormous blow to the war itself.

Similarly, Josef Stalin was unrelenting.

He would not tolerate defeat.

He would not tolerate pulling back.

To surrender or to give ground

would be met by the utmost sanction.

- NARRATOR: The Luftwaffe drop 1,000 tons of bombs

on Stalingrad

before 2 1/2 million troops clash.

- COL. FARRELL: The ferocity of the Battle of Stalingrad

was something straight out of hell.

It was not uncommon for battles to be raging

not over parts of the city or city blocks,

but literally for different floors

within one building.

In some cases, Soviet reinforcements

came forward without weapons,

facing certain death.

And yet again and again and again they came.

- NARRATOR: As the battle rages,

the Red Army launch "Operation Uranus."

What Hitler's high command cannot see

is revealed from space.

Over 1 million Soviet soldiers

outflank the German positions,

before cutting through the enemy's rear.

- Operation Uranus was a complete shock,

and suddenly Stalingrad was encircled.

- NARRATOR: Cut off from supply,

the Germans are plunged

into the harshest of Russian winters.

In sub-human conditions, they begin to disintegrate.

- PROF. OVERY: It was freezing cold.

Food supplies began to decline.

Guns jammed.

It was a nightmare.

It's difficult to convey in simple words

what that experience was like.

- NARRATOR: After five months under siege,

Hitler's once-mighty 6th Army capitulates-

the first German field army to do so.

Nearly 2 million have fallen,

but for the Soviets, the tide is turning.

- COL. FARRELL: The boost to Soviet morale

can scarcely be overstated.

German prisoners were marched through Moscow.

And this proved that the Nazi soldiers

were not supermen.

Instead, they saw German soldiers who quit,

who surrendered, who could not match

the determination of the Soviet soldier.

- NARRATOR: For Hitler, the defeat is devastating.

Instinctively, he strikes back.

- COL. FARRELL: Adolf Hitler attempted

to regain the strategic initiative,

to close a gap-- a bulge if you will--

centered around Kursk.

- NARRATOR: Seen from above, Hitler's objective is clear--

eliminate the bulge, concentrate his forces,

and regain the initiative.

For the Allies, it is critical

that its newest military partner holds.

- DR. PORTER: The eastern front is vital to the Allies

because it absorbs the bulk of Germany's fighting power.

To put it very brutally, the Soviets

did most of the fighting and most of the dying on land.

- NARRATOR: President Roosevelt commits over $11 billion

of lend lease supplies to Stalin.

Yet traditional trade routes through Europe are blocked.

Getting US aid into the Soviet Union

is one of the greatest Allied logistical challenges

of the war.

- There were three routes that we could use.

One was the North Atlantic route

into the northern Arctic ports of Archangel and Murmansk--

stormy seas, iced in, hard to get to.

And then there was one across to the Pacific to Vladivostok,

but everything had to be unloaded in Siberia

and then trucked into Russia

on the Trans-Siberian Railway,

which is slow and time-consuming.

And then there was the one around the Cape of Good Hope,

up into Iran and into Southern Russia that way.

- NARRATOR: The Persian Gulf route

is crucial to Russian success,

but making it viable is a monumental task.

- We had to build a supply chain from scratch.

There was no infrastructure.

The harbors are not there-- we have to construct those.

- NARRATOR: Allied engineers build wharfs,

jetties, and piers.

Simultaneously, 450 miles of roads are constructed

and 2000 miles of railway modernized.

With all routes now open,

the US pumps 16 million tons of lend lease

into Russia.

Included are gasoline,

ammunition,

an entire military telecommunication system,

14 million pairs of boots,

and enough food to offer every Soviet soldier

one square meal a day for over a year.

But most significant

are the half million Studebaker trucks

supplied by the factories of Detroit.

- The Studebaker truck was a real game changer,

because it gives the Soviet Army

the ability to operate on a massive scale

with far-flung logistics.

The other thing that these trucks give them

is an advantage literally within the battle itself.

The Russians had a lot of artillery.

You match that artillery with the truck,

and suddenly they've got

these flying anti-tank batteries literally zipping

across different parts of the battlefield.

- NARRATOR: To give the Soviets the tactical advantage at Kursk,

the Allies supply one final thing--

intelligence of the German offensive plans.

- PETER: The Soviets knew they were coming.

And so they create defenses of a scale

that really hadn't been seen before in the war.

I mean people talk about the Maginot Line in France.

This thing was the Maginot Line put on steroids.

- NARRATOR: From space,

the full enormity of the Soviet defenses

becomes clear.

Three defensive lines contain

a vast interconnected web of thousands of anti-tank guns,

pre-sighted artillery zones,

and over 400,000 mines.

It is the largest defense network ever constructed--

over 50 miles deep.

July 5, 1943...

over 2,000 tanks and 2 million troops engage.

- COL. FARRELL: The level of intensity at the Battle of Kursk

was extraordinary.

Large numbers of tanks and soldiers

were fighting to the most brutal degree

at very close quarters.

There was brutal hand-to-hand combat,

flamethrowers,

thousands of tanks,

coupled with artillery raining down.

All of this would have combined

to create a scene that would have resembled

hell on earth.

- NARRATOR: After 11 days,

the German offensive collapses,

only a third of the way to their objective.

Hitler's attempt to crush the Soviet Union

has failed.

- COL. FARRELL: Hitler's worst nightmare

had come to pass.

Germany would now be faced with a war on two fronts

and a war of attrition.

- NARRATOR: Stalin gains

the initiative on the Eastern Front

at a huge cost--

over 9 million Soviet casualties.

In contrast,

America has yet to put a single soldier

on the battlefields of Europe.

- Stalin was deeply frustrated with Allied dawdling

about opening a second front.

He assumed that it was a conspiracy,

that Churchill and Roosevelt

were going to fight to the last Russian.

Then the British and Americans would cross the Channel

and harvest all the spoils of war,

the Russians having won it

with their own blood and treasure.

- NARRATOR: Prior to a full-scale invasion of Europe,

Roosevelt elects to blood his troops

in North Africa.

- COL. FARRELL: The North African campaign

was a testing ground for the American army,

which had yet to face the German military

in a significant way.

- NARRATOR: Overconfident and inexpefienced,

the US Military is about to receive a baptism of fire--

- [bombs exploding]

- NARRATOR: --that will shake it to its core.

- The disaster at Kasserine Pass was a seminal event.

- NARRATOR: As the American Pacific drive

towards Japan accelerates,

and as Stalin in the East

and the Allied bombing campaign in the west

continue to weaken the Third Reich,

America prepares to test its troops

in North Africa.

They will join a desert campaign

that has been raging for over two years.

June 1 O, 1940...

Italy, under Benito Mussolini,

joins the Axis

and, with Germany, plans to force Britain

from North Africa.

- PROF. WAWRO: North Africa was a vital front

for the British in World War ll

because it was the vital hinge of the British Empire.

- NARRATOR: A German and Italian victory

will open up the untapped oil reserves

of the Middle East

and seize the Suez Canal

that connects Britain to its empire.

- LTG MASON: The Suez Canal you needed to protect at all costs.

The bottom line, if you are moving

large quantities of equipment, you gotta use the sea lanes.

And that's as true today as it was then.

- NARRATOR: September 1940...

the Axis invades.

For two years, they drive the British back.

But the advance is halted

as German Field Marshall Rommel

is defeated at El Alamein.

To capitalize on this victory,

Churchill lobbies Roosevelt for support.

But the majority of presidential advisers have their doubts.

- COL. FARRELL: Initially

most American senior military personnel,

saw the campaign in North Africa

as a diversion from the main effort,

essentially a waste of time.

- NARRATOR: Decisively, Roosevelt overrides his council.

- DR. CRANE: FDR's decision to send American forces

to North Africa was probably

the most important strategic decision of World War ll.

- PROF. WAWRO: It really gave us a place where we could

land the US army, bring it into the battle

against secondary German units,

not the units we'd encounter in Europe.

And so it was-- it was a brilliant move.

- NARRATOR: Since the Pearl Harbor attack,

a vast American army has been amassing,

hungry for their first taste of war.

- MAN 5: People were lined up at the recruiting stations.

All the boys were up in arms.

I graduated in February,

and I was in uniform in March.

The country had been violated, is what we thought.

And everybody just wanted to get busy

and do something about it.

- NARRATOR: Volunteers and inductees from the draft

swell the ranks as America rises to become

the largest military power in the world.

- COL. FARRELL: Before the war,

the total strength of the US Army,

including its Air Corps,

was Well below 200,000.

There would be over a 40-fold increase

in the space of 6 years.

- PROF. KENNEDY: During the war, the armed forces

encompassed 16 million men under arms.

That's 13% of the entire population.

- NARRATOR: With this vast army assembled,

America is primed for "Operation Torch,"

then the largest amphibious invasion

in history.

- Torch actually was a very important rehearsal

for D-Day-- it was a huge operation.

It was logistically extremely complex.

- Torch was a monumental challenge for the US,

because we hadn't won the Battle of Atlantic yet.

We have to escort troops, ammunition, supplies

from the United States direct to North Africa,

escort troops from Great Britain down to North Africa,

through waters patrolled by German submarines.

Then we have to land them on a hostile shore.

- NARRATOR: November 8, 1942...

73,000 Allied troops

disgorge onto the beaches,

and immediately the problems begin.

- MAN 6: What we saw in the landings of North Africa

is a great study in everything that can go wrong

in an amphibious landing.

And virtually everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

- PETER: The landing craft-- you didn't run out the front,

right onto the beach.

Instead you had to jump over the side.

That, of course, is not the most efficient way to get in there.

It's the most dangerous-- it's the slowest.

A number of our craft get stuck on sandbars.

When they drive them out, the electronics get fried.

- Fortunately, they're fighting the Vichy French,

who fight half-heartedly.

And had they been attacking the Germans in 1944,

the Japanese in 1944,

the experience would have been a lot, uh--

a lot worse.

- NARRATOR: As French Vichy troops loyal to Hitler

capitulate,

US forces head for Tunisia

and their first clash

with the full-strength German war machine.

- PROF. WAWRO: They're really blissfully ignorant

of the realities of modern war.

I mean they've got their trucks, they've got their tanks,

they've got their rifles,

they've got their very complicated chain of command

from army to corps, division,

brigade, regiment, battalion.

They think that they'll do fine.

- NARRATOR: US forces engage Rommel

outside the town of Faid.

Making an initial breakthrough,

they pursue retreating panzer divisions.

From space, Rommel's master tactic is revealed--

the panzers are decoys,

luring US forces into a trap.

- CHRIS: They fall prey to the techniques

of double envelopment by the Germans,

with some very good weapons like the German 88.

- The 88mm gun was literally

a world-class anti-tank weapon.

Not only could it shoot at a further distance,

but it had an incredible kill rate.

It's basically just lethal.

This thing is diabolic.

- COL. FARRELL: In many cases, Americans either surrendered

or dropped their weapons and ran.

The American performance, to put it charitably,

was--was abysmal.

- NARRATOR: US forces are pushed back in to Kasserine Pass,

where under constant attack,

the untested units fall apart.

- PROF. KENNEDY: To raise an armed force

of 16 million people in a hurry means

that in the initial stages of armed conflict,

you're going to have troops in the front line

who have no taste of battle before this moment.

Dwight Eisenhower, for example,

becomes the supreme Allied commander.

Before World War ll, before his North African campaign,

he had never heard a bullet fired in anger

in his entire life.

He had no actual combat experience.

- NARRATOR: Further disaster is averted when reinforcements

from the British 1st Army arrive.

And with Field Marshall Montgomery

approaching from the East,

Rommel retreats.

Frank Gervasi witnesses the aftermath.

- We got to Kasserine Pass, and we had patrols going out,

and you could still smell the flesh,

from, you know, the burnt-out tanks

and human beings, and uh, it was bad.

We took an awful beating.

Don't forget, though, we were against

Germany's best--Rommel's.

We had the equipment but we didn't have the experience.

- NARRATOR: America suffers 6,500 casualties.

Its first land battle in World War ll

is a disaster.

- Kasserine was a tremendous defeat for the United States.

There's just no way to sugar-coat that.

On the other hand, Kasserine is the best thing

that ever happened to the US Army.

Better to get your butt kicked there

than get your butt kicked in Normandy.

- There are some changes made in policies,

in how we're going to operate,

but there are also some key leadership changes.

You've got Eisenhower earning his spurs.

You've got George Patton.

And the lessons learned in North Africa

are gonna be applied for the rest of World War ll.

- NARRATOR: The new US Army doctrines

ensure a dramatic turnaround.

First, Tunisia falls, followed by Sicily,

preparing the way for the Allied invasion of Italy.

And on the other side of the world,

the Pacific war enters a new phase of ferocity.

- The carnage was phenomenal.

- [bomb whistles, plane engine roars]

- NARRATOR: From the ashes of Pearl Harbor,

the American war machine

is approaching full potential,

engaging her enemies on three continents.

In the Pacific,

troop numbers grow by 457%.

Its fleet trebles in size.

With this vast force assembled,

America's final drive towards Japan begins.

- The American strategy is a dual-pronged approach,

with Admiral Nimitz,

with the Navy Marines going through the central Pacific,

General MacArthur with most of the army forces

coming through the Southwest Pacific--

both approaching Japan from different axes.

- NARRATOR: Admiral Nimitz's flotilla

is the largest in history--

the perfect weapon to destroy

Japan's defensive strongholds.

- PETER: It's this massive fleet

of aircraft carriers, destroyers,

fast battleships,

backed by this long logistics train

of supply ships, oilers,

hospital ships-- you name it.

This thing was lethality

and industrialization personified.

- NARRATOR: The flotilla targets Saipan,

one of the Mariana Islands.

Its airfields can become the launchpad

for a sustained aerial bombardment of Japan.

Emperor Hirohito demands

his 32,000 troops stationed there

to defend at all costs.

- COL. FARRELL: For the Japanese,

defeat was not an option-- retreat was not an option.

If it meant losing everything and everyone,

they would do it in pursuit of victory.

- NARRATOR: June 1944...

8,000 US marines hit the beaches

under intense Japanese fire.

- PROF. OVERY: For the marines, it was a nightmare.

At the end of the day, the Japanese have one job,

which is to inflict heavy casualties

on the people attacking them.

If you're in the front line,

you're going to be one of those casualties.

- NARRATOR: Facing fanatical resistance,

a further 80,000 troops land,

all dependent on naval support.

But what US Commander Admiral Spruance

cannot see...

are 55 Japanese ships rapidly approaching.

- For the Japanese, this really was gonna be

their last shot.

They had to have success here in this particular battle,

or they were not gonna be ever able to field

this kind of force again.

- NARRATOR: Responding to danger,

Spruance splits his force,

dispatching one half to engage the Japanese fleet.

As the two forces clash,

US technological superiority dominates,

most notably 480 newly developed Hellcats.

- PETER: The Hellcat's just an incredible weapon.

It's fast.

It can take hits and still keep going on.

It's well armored.

And on top of that, it's now flown

by elite pilots.

- The Japanese lost most of their well-trained pilots

in other battles-- they couldn't replace them.

They didn't have the fuel to train.

Their aircraft weren't as good.

- And that's what really creates the turkey shoot

of the Battle of the Philippines Sea.

- NARRATOR: Over the next 8 hours,

429 Japanese planes are destroyed,

compared to 29 American--

a kill ratio of 15 to 1.

- DR. CRANE: The scale of the slaughter

between the American pilots and the Japanese

is significant enough where, after the battle of Marianas,

the Japanese aircraft carrier force

is no longer a factor in the war in the Pacific.

- NARRATOR: On land, American troops

continue to face ferocious resistance.

- PROF. KENNEDY: The Pacific war was

a bitter and cruel war,

but at Saipan, it became more and more evident

how deep was the Japanese ferocity

or the ferociousness

of the Japanese capacity to resist.

There are these hair-raising stories about how the Americans

had to lower drums of gasoline and explode them

in the caves in which the Japanese were hiding,

because they could not induce people

to come out and surrender.

- NARRATOR: The suicidal fervor is not confined to soldiers.

Eight thousand Japanese civilians

leap to their deaths.

- PROF. KENNEDY: The American witnesses

could not believe their eyes that they were seeing

this mass suicide of Japanese civilians,

including women and children--

mothers killing their own babies--

rather than surrender to the Americans.

- NARRATOR: When Saipan falls,

over 3,400 Americans lie dead,

alongside 46,000 Japanese,

half of whom are civilian suicides.

It is a mere taste of what's to come.

- NARRATOR: January 1945

American Air Force General Curtis LeMay

arrives at the conquered airfields

of the Marianas.

The war in the Pacific...

- [bomb explodes]

- NARRATOR: ...is about to ruthlessly escalate.

- COL. FARRELL: Curtis LeMay believed

there should be no hesitation and no moderation

in bringing destruction to the enemy,

and the surest, most effective way to do that

would be through massive, unrestrained strategic bombing.

- He was going out to destroy

the industrial power of Japan.

And the kindling for all those fires he was lighting

to burn down the factories

happened to be houses with people in them.

- NARRATOR: March 9...

over 300 B-29's reach Tokyo.

They systematically lay down

1,665 tons of M-69 incendiary clusters

over the wooden city.

It remains the most destructive air raid

in the history of mankind.

- The Japanese later called the early fire raids

the "night of the black snow,"

because of the debris and the impact

of these particular raids on their lives.

The master bomber who was watching the raids

said you could see the fires 150 miles away.

You had asphalt melting in the streets.

You had glass melting out of buildings.

A lot the air crews were really shaken up by the results.

Tail gunners reported watching people burning to death

and burning rivers covered with napalm.

Japanese doctors wrote about watching the debris

floating in rivers afterwards,

and they couldn't tell if it was bodies or sticks of wood.

- NARRATOR: Sixteen square miles are razed to the ground.

The inferno claims 90,000 civilian lives

and leaves over 1 million homeless.

On the other side of the Atlantic,

Allied forces converge

to prepare for an equally decisive breakthrough

in the liberation of Europe.

- For the Allies, the D-day landings

represented the success or failure

of the entire war.

- But the outcome really rested on a knife edge.

- [machine guns firing, bombs exploding]

- NARRATOR: November, 1943...

Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill

meet in Tehran to plan "Operation Overlord,"

the invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe.

Churchill warns of the challenges that await them.

- The British had learned firsthand

how capable, how effective a fighting force

the Wehrmacht was.

- NARRATOR: Britain's experience is chastening-

evacuated from Dunkirk in 1940,

driven from Norway and Greece.

Yet despite the dangers,

the Allies determine to risk everything

on a full-scale cross-Channel invasion

into the teeth of the Nazi defenses.

- COL. FARRELL: In order for D-Day to succeed,

it required four distinct events to happen.

First, the Allies needed the momentum

of manpower and equipment

to make it to the beach

and continue to reinforce the beachhead

once the landings were secure.

Secondly was air supremacy.

The Allies had to prevent the Germans

from reinforcing their positions on the beachhead.

Also, the Allies needed a major Soviet offensive

so that Germany would be sandwiched

between two invading armies.

And finally, the element of surprise.

If the Germans had been aware that the invasion was coming,

it would have certainly failed.

- NARRATOR: To win the intelligence war,

the Allies launch "Operation Fortitude."

- Operation Fortitude stands to the present day

as arguably the greatest deception plan

in modern warfare.

- NARRATOR: In an audacious act of misdirection,

a decoy army of 11 ghost divisions

figure headed by General Patton

assembles opposite Calais.

- They had to really trick the German high command

into thinking that Calais,

the shortest route across the Channel,

was the way that the invasion was going to be mounted.

It had dummy tanks,

dummy airstrips, dummy hangers.

And they let the German reconnaissance aircraft

fly over these areas and say, "Oh, here's a huge army.

This is clearly where they're going to put their main effort."

- NARRATOR: With Fortitude blinding the Axis,

the real invasion force secretly assembles...

9 1/2 million tons of supplies,

4,000 amphibious vessels,

and over 1 1/2 million troops.

The man charged

with the immense logistical challenge of the landings

is British Naval mastermind, Sir Bertram Ramsey.

- Sir Bertram Ramsey's plan was meticulous,

it was complex, it was rehearsed,

and it was thorough in every way.

- NARRATOR: The plan is astonishing.

Almost 7,000 vessels

will be loaded with men and supplies

and moved in secret to the assembly points.

At a pre-determined time,

they will navigate through narrow channels

cleared of mines,

towards enemy shores through unpredictable seas.

Simultaneously, naval screens will be mounted

to protect against Axis counterattacks.

- LTG MASON: The scope and depth of it--

it's just off the scale.

Me personally, I've been involved in planning

for things like Desert Storm,

uh, Operation Iraqi Freedom--

the early pieces of it-- and even that,

with big computers and lots of smart guys working it,

it was daunting then.

- NARRATOR: Getting the Allied forces to the beachheads

is just the start.

Awaiting them is Hitler's Atlantic wall,

a defensive network 1,600 miles long

and considered by the Führer as unbreachable.

- PETER: It's this combination of everything

from millions of mines,

specific defenses

designed to rip the bottom of a landing craft.

Then you get to machine gun bunkers

with interlocking fires,

6-inch cannons-you name it.

It's just a nasty, nasty piece of work.

- DR. CRANE: You know, there are trained troops

who've been there for years sighting

every avenue of approach off the beach.

And you know there are gonna be massive counterattacks--

the Germans are masters at that.

So there's just so much uncertainty.

- NARRATOR: The window of opportunity

is desperately narrow.

Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower

sets the date...

June 5, 1944.

- COL. FARRELL: Once Eisenhower

made the decision,

it was irrevocable--

there was no plan B.

This was it--go for broke.

Either the invasion would succeed

or the invasion attempt

would have to be put off indefinitely.

- Dwight Eisenhower sat down and wrote a little note

taking blame for the failure of the landings

that he was prepared to deliver if it did fail.

No one on the Allied side saw this as a sure thing.

- [bombs exploding]

- NARRATOR: As the Allies bomb the French infrastructure

connecting Normandy to the east,

3 million servicemen

are locked away from the population.

Coastal towns are locked down.

The fate of the world hangs in the balance.

After an agonizing 24-hour delay due to bad weather,

"Overlord," the most important Allied operation

of World War ll

is set in motion.

Before the armada embarks for Normandy,

the Allies launch

one final master class of deception.

To convince the Germans

that Calais is the invasion site,

British bombers circle at low altitude,

dropping tons of metallic chaff into the air.

- CHRIS: This created a huge radar registry for the Germans,

and this phantom army that has been constructed in their minds

through documents and fake bases--

now it starts to come alive.

- Totally threw the German defensive planning.

It threw it into disarray.

- NARRATOR: With the misdirection campaign

underway,

the invasion force heads towards its targets--

five beachheads

and a cliff-top gun emplacement at Pointe Du Hoc.

Ahead of the transports,

an aerial and naval barrage pounds the coastal defenses.

Despite the assault, the men on the landing craft

come under ferocious German fire.

- MICHAEL: It was confusing.

The German Planes were going right over us.

There was these bombs and guns going off and everything else.

- Some of the boats, they got hit by bombs already,

and all you could see was you don't know who they were--

see guys laying in the water,

some with limbs off and arms.

There was more than being frightened on the boats.

Some guys were crying a little bit.

Some guys was even urinating.

- We were all nervous-- everybody was--

but there was nothing you could do about it.

You knew what had to do and it had to be done.

- NARRATOR: Charles Barley and Michael Vernillo

are amongst the first to hit Omaha,

the most heavily defended German position.

- A lot of guys were in a bunch getting off the boat,

and they were killed instantly,

you might as well say.

We got into the water.

The water was up to my stomach,

and I said to myself, I said, "Goodbye, Charlie--you're gone."

And then it was really a terrible feeling in the water.

You can see there's bodies laying around,

and you couldn't identify them...

it was really nasty-- really bloody.

- COL. FARRELL: Those fortunate enough

to make it off the boats--

the scene they would have confronted,

it's almost unimaginable.

They would have been suffering still from seasickness.

They would have heard the whirring of bullets

above their heads.

They would have seen in front of them

dead and dying American soldiers.

But it was more than chaos.

It was deadly chaos.

- NARRATOR: As the Allies continue to land

against merciless German fire,

the casualty rate soars.

- But after 15 hours of fighfing,

all beachheads are taken

with Pointe Du Hoc falling the following day.

The Allies suffer 10,000 casualties,

but it is blood shed achieving the almost-impossible.

They have a foothold in Nazi-occupied Europe.

- For Hitler, this was

the nightmare come to pass.

- We basically, you know,

signed the death certificate of Nazi Germany

on June 6, 1944.

- COL. FARRELL: After weeks and weeks

of being bottled up in the Normandy beachhead,

the breakout that occurred exceeded expectations.

- NARRATOR: The success is down to the network of supply lines

chasing the front-line soldiers.

Connecting France with the war depot of Britain

are artificial Mulberry harbors,

landing 2 1/2 million men,

4 million tons of supplies,

and 500,000 vehicles within the first 10 months.

Fueling the offensive is "Operation Pluto"...

70 miles of undersea pipeline

pumping up to a million gallons of fuel per day into France.

- LTG MASON: Those tons and those millions of gallons

of fuel were on a scale

that probably won't be replicated in the future,

so what they accomplished might be unique

in human history, really.

- NARRATOR: From space, the speed of advance

is astounding.

August 19... Paris is liberated,

followed by Rouen, Verdun,

Antwerp and Brussels.

By September, the Allies reach the Siegfried Line

on the cusp of the German Fatherland.

Hitler launches his final, desperate counterattack-

the Battle of the Bulge.

Despite heavy losses, the Allies prevail

and Nazi Germany stands on the abyss.

- Hitler's gamble in the Ardennes

basically ensures the end of the Reich.

This is his last operational force he had

where he could try to influence

the pace of either front, East or West.

Once he threw that force away,

the American-Soviet conquering

of the Reich in the next year was inevitable.

- NARRATOR: The War in Europe nears its climax.

On the other side of the planet, the drive towards Japan

is also approaching its bloody conclusion.

But every island invaded

is coming at increasingly higher cost.

- PROF WAWRO: At every stage, the ferocity

and intensity of Japanese defense increases.

What they thought were suicidal defense tactics in Saipan

are redoubled at lwo Jima.

- NARRATOR: February 19, 1945...

60,000 US Marines

storm the island of lwo Jima,

where a battle of unrivaled brutality begins.

- [machine guns firing, bombs exploding]

- COL. FARRELL: The fighting on lwo Jima

stands as arguably the fiercest fighting

that US military personnel

have ever experienced.

There was no amount of punishment

could be inflicted on the Japanese

that would cause them to lose their will.

- PETER: Essentially they've decided

that they are going to die there.

And when you have that kind of suicidal fervor,

it means that the sort of tactics

that you might have used previously

don't work.

And so we start using flamethrowers,

napalm, tanks up close--

a style of battle

that raises the level of violence,

even past what we've seen

in earlier parts of World War ll,

which is hard to imagine.

- NARRATOR: When lwo Jima falls,

Japan suffers 20,000 casualties

compared to 23,000 American,

the first time US casualties

exceed that of their enemy.

As Allied forces prepare to invade Okinawa,

the proposed launch pad for the invasion of Japan,

the stakes for both sides are vast.

- DR. CRANE: The Japanese defenders of Okinawa knew

that they were not going to survive--they could not win.

But they hoped that, by causing enough casualties,

creating enough horror, that it might either

make the Americans decide not to invade Japan,

or at least maybe get the Japanese

a better peace offer of some kind.

- NARRATOR: April 1, 1945...

the America armada approaches its target.

Its scale is unmatched in the Pacific War.

- Okinawa was a military undertaking

on a scale that rivaled D-Day--

the size of the invasion force,

the size of the invasion fleet.

- NARRATOR: One thousand- two hundred warships

support 3 mass amphibious attack forces

hitting the beaches.

More than 170,000 troops land eerily unopposed.

But unseen by American troops

are 97,000 Japanese defenders,

ready to strike with unprecedented savagery.

- They are taking the Japanese soldier

and using just his body as a weapon.

- NARRATOR: Japanese soldiers with 22-lb satchel bombs

run under tanks.

Six thousand defenders banzai-charge marines

armed only with bamboo spears and sidearms.

- PROF. KENNEDY: In our own time, we make the comparison

with suicide bombers, but if you can imagine

where entire Japanese units had

that depth of commitment that would actually suffer

mass, essentially suicidal death

rather than surrender their position--

that's a very formidable military obstacle.

- [plane engines whirring]

- NARRATOR: At sea, wave after wave of Kamikazes

crash into US ships.

- DR. CRANE: The Kamikazes were especially terrifying

to the Americans trying to shoot them down

because how do you deter somebody

who is willing to die for something.

Their goal is to die.

And 18% of Kamikazes hit ships.

- NARRATOR: Four hundred-four US ships are struck.

When Okinawa finally falls,

nearly 100,000 Japanese soldiers

and 150,000 civilians lie dead.

The US suffers 76,000 casualties,

a third of the entire invasion force.

- DR. CRANE: The escalation is just horrifying here.

And these are little islands,

and now we're talking about invading

the whole Japanese homeland,

where there are millions of defenders

and even more millions of civilians?

- NARRATOR: The US War Department estimates

that the invasion of Japan will result

in 10 million Japanese casualties,

along with at least 1.7 million American.

Another solution must be sought.

As the Allies celebrate victory in Europe...

as Hitler and his Reich go up in flames...

America swears in a new president.

And Harry Truman is destined to unleash

a weapon SO fearsome

it will herald in a new dawn of warfare

across the globe.

- [bomb explodes, menacing music]

- NARRATOR: War has ravaged the world for nearly six years.

Germany and Italy are defeated.

Only Japan fights on in defiance of the Allies.

But a new weapon is about to make World War ll

reach its climax...

December 1938...

German scientists split the atom,

releasing 200 million volts of electricity.

After Albert Einstein warns US President Roosevelt

that Hitler plans an atomic program,

the race for the Bomb is on.

America, in collaboration with Britain and Canada,

launches the Manhattan Project.

Entire towns and industrial complexes

are constructed across the nation.

Employing 600,000 people

and costing $2 billion--

$25.8 billion in today's money--

it is engineering on an unprecedented scale.

- DR. CRANE: No other nation in the world could have done

the Manhattan project like the United States did.

You get all these theorists together, and they say

there are two ways in which we can build this weapon.

There's a plutonium bomb and a uranium bomb.

They're different processes.

They're both immensely expensive.

Anybody else would have said,

"Which one do I want to focus on?"

And the US said, "We're gonna make sure this works.

"We're going to do both."

- NARRATOR: July 1945...

the project bears fruit--

a uranium bomb code-named "Little Boy"

and a plutonium bomb code-named "Fat Man."

- The atomic bomb is a technology

that historically is on the scale

of the introduction of gunpowder.

They've taken the kind of lethality

that's been honed throughout World War ll

and multiplied it by a whole new aura of magnitude.

- COL. FARRELL: For the first time,

with a single event,

an entire city could be destroyed.

This represented a new era in warfare.

- NARRATOR: Returning

from the Potsdam Conference,

US President Harry S. Truman

must decide whether to unleash

the atomic bomb on Japan.

- DR. CRANE: If it had come out a year later

that the president of the United States

had a weapon he could have used,

that might have ended the war earlier,

and instead he did not,

and we suffered 100,000 extra casualties,

he would have been run out of--

at best, run out of town on a rail.

There was no way an American president,

responsible to his constituents,

could have not used this weapon.

- NARRATOR: Truman, hostile to Stalin and his communist ethos,

can see the significance of a nuclear strike

for the postwar world.

- PROF. OVERY: In 1945, America faced a real paradox.

For a long time, of course, Roosevelt and Truman

had been saying to Stalin, you know,

"Please help us with the war against Japan.

"Please invade Manchuria.

Please defeat the Japanese army."

But when it was realized that the Soviet Union

might defeat the Japanese and then move on

and occupy part of the Japanese islands,

that's not what the Americans wanted at all.

They wanted the task of rebuilding Japan.

And I think this was one of the most important factors

in influencing the American decision

to drop the Atomic bomb.

- [bomb exploding]

- NARRATOR: After a successful test in the New Mexico desert,

Truman gives the order to drop the bomb

as soon as possible.

- PROF. OVERY: A number of cities were chosen

as potential targets.

They were left untouched by the incendiary bombing,

because if you bombed a city, you couldn't tell

how much damage had been done by the atomic attacks.

They were also looking for one with quite a large population,

because if you could attack a city with a large population,

you, again, would be able to see the full impact.

When you look at it, this is a really cynical decision

for choosing a target

on which you're going to drop the most dangerous weapon

that has ever been developed.

- NARRATOR: On August 6, 1945,

the Enola Gay launches from the Mariana Islands.

At 8:15 a.m. local time,

"Little Boy," loaded with 60 kg of Uranium,

is released over Hiroshima.

Forty-three seconds later,

the world changes forever.

The blast creates a circle of devastation

1 mile wide,

with fires over another 4 1/2-mile radius.

Sixty-thousand are killed instantly,

with a further 100,000 dying

from burns and radiation.

Three days later,

"Fat Man" is exploded over Nagasaki,

killing 80,000 civilians.

- DR. CRANE: After the first bomb in Japan,

there was a certain amount of disbelief.

After Nagasaki, though, it was kind of hard to deny

that the Americans had some kind of new weapon here,

and this is just the start of what could be

a long pattern of destruction.

- NARRATOR: September 2, 1945...

Japan capitulates.

World War ll is over.

The nuclear age has begun.

- DR. CRANE: A lot of people think

that the moral, ethical line of destruction in World War ll

is crossed by the atomic bomb.

I disagree.

I think that if there's any moral lines left,

they're all crossed with the fire raids

against Japanese cities.

The whole question of the atomic bomb is,

"Will we continue to do what our weapons make possible?"

And that is the ultimate dilemma we've hit

with atomic and nuclear weapons.

- [poignant orchestral music]

- PROF. KENNEDY: If you ask

who won World War ll,

and if by that you mean,

what society, what nation,

contributed the most

in blood and treasure

to the eventual victory,

it's not the United States.

It's the Soviet Union.

Soviet losses in the war... over 25 million people.

American losses are 405,399 military dead

and a handful of civilians.

But if you ask the question who won World War ll,

and you mean who ended up

in the most advantageous position at the end of the war--

reaped the greatest fruits of victory--

then the answer is clearly the United States.

- NARRATOR: During the 6 years of war,

America grows from the 17th world military power

to number 1.

Her overseas bases expand from 14

to over 30,000 spread across the globe.

Her GNP doubles,

and she becomes the biggest creditor in the world,

commanding half of the planet's manufacturing capacity

and owning 2/3 of the world's gold stocks.

- DR. CRANE: It dominates the world economy.

It controls the formation of the UN.

It launches the world on a path towards globalization

that it wants.

But it can no longer go back to being isolationist.

The isolationist America is gone forever.

I'm not sure if it has actually sunk in even today

how much we have to be involved.

But as a result of World War ll, we're drawn in the world's ways.

We cannot escape... whether we realize it or not.

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