Original subtitles

Previously on World War II in HD

Flash, Washington: The White House announces Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

I doubt if any of us really knew where in the hell Pearl Harbor was.

ROTC graduate Charles Scheffel ships off to war and is put to the test in North Africa.

I can hear screams and moans from my guys, and off to my right, the damn kid stands right up.

Killed, right then and there.

And then I yelled at my men, "damn it! Don't anybody else stand up! I will get you guys out of there.

Meanwhile, Austrian-Jewish immigrant Jack Werner enlists in America's army.

My life was almost completely obsessed with Hitler,

and we decided it's about time to stop talking and doing something.

Sent to the Aleutian island of Attu,

he sees his first action as allied forces reclaim American territory from the Japanese.

Finally, I have my chance to prove myself in combat and feel like a man who can carry his own.

Grant us a common faith that man shall know bread and peace,

that he shall know justice and righteousness, freedom and security;

an equal opportunity and an equal chance to do his best,

not only in our own lands, but throughout the world.

This is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end.

But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.

For the past two and half years, the Allies have confronted one irrefutable fact:

If they are ever to defeat Hitler, they must invade and retake Fortress Europe.

The massive offensives which are in the making will require every ounce of energy and fortitude that we and our allies can stomach.

Without victory, there is no survival.

Let that be realized.

No survival!

Everyone knows a big show is coming, but not much more.

After surviving 12 months of brutal campaigning against Axis forces in North Africa and Sicily,

army second lieutenant Charles Scheffel is in England.

The 24-year-old combat veteran is with the 39th infantry regiment

practicing assault landings in preparation for the most complicated amphibious assault in history.

Every time we come down here,

we see more embarkation camps popping up along the coast and more ships in the harbors.

After victories in North Africa and Italy,

the allies finally feel ready to launch their long-anticipated invasion of France.

Every open space is crammed with gear and supplies.

The countryside is filled with tanks, trucks, half-tracks, munitions of all sorts.

If they put any more supplies on the island of Great Britain, it's gonna sink.

There isn't any place you can go that you didn't find military equipment.

And then that's when I realized how massive this attack is gonna be.

As allied forces in Europe prepare for the Normandy invasion,

military planners in the pacific set in motion their own massive assault against the Japanese.

26-Year-old sergeant Jack Werner is part of a force of 85,000 army soldiers

and marines steaming toward the Mislands.

After volunteering for special duty with the scouts on Attu,

Werner is back with his regular unit,

the 7th infantry division's 13th combat engineer battalion.

The men are full of wild guesses.

It seems we're to take part in an operation designed to crack the outer perimeter of the Japanese Empire.

The mission of Werner's task force is to seize an atoll of 97 tiny islands

called Kwajalein.

The Marines will assault Roi and Namur in the north

while the army assaults Kwajalein island in the south.

The capture of this atoll will pave the way for an assault

on the ultimate strategic objective in the central pacific: The Mariana islands.

From airfields in the Marianas,

just 1,300 miles south of Japan, b-29 heavy bombers will be able to strike Tokyo.

All around us are tiny coral islands with shimmering beaches, like pearls strung on a necklace,

tiny spots of land is the vast ocean.

Now the target of the entire might of the central pacific fleet.

Seven of us are assigned to all the explosives.

Our job is to shuttle them ashore to the troops whenever they are needed.

So instead of actually fighting, it looks like I'll be the man behind the man behind the gun.

It's damned frustrating. I want to be in the action.

While Werner's group waits behind with extra ammo and explosives,

the rest of the 7th infantry division will assault the southern section of the atoll

and the 2-mile long Kwajalein island.

The fortress island, guarded by 5,000 Japanese defenders,

hosts a formidable array of fighting positions and bunkers.

Our men's mood is one of expectation and some tension.

They know that new combat is ahead of us and that our enemy will be fought under new, perhaps tougher, circumstances.

It will mean bloody and ferocious fighting.

(Lord's Prayer is being recited during a Christian Communion) "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil..."

It's awesome. A terrific barrage.

It looks to me like the island will be sunk.

When I was on Attu, I didn't have the slightest idea what was going on.

On Kwajalein,

I had the experience of seeing a coordinated attack

by various parts of the army and the navy and the air force.

You could make sense, so to speak, out of this.

You just couldn't help being totally assured or reassured that

we were gonna beat them.

My old buddies in "A" company are going in the first and fourth assault waves.

I wish I was with them.

I would have bet my c-ration that all that shelling would have taken out the enemy.

But as our casualties stream off the wrecked island,

All I can do is ask how it's going in there,

and sit here,

and wait for my turn.

It's hard not to think about the 8 other guys who slept in this bed in the last 4 months.

All are dead now.

On in a POW (prisoner-of-war) camp somewhere.

23-Year-old Colorado native Bert Stiles has just arrived at his barracks in Bassingbourn, England.

The aspiring novelist signed up for the army air force hoping to become a fighter pilot.

Instead, he's been assigned as a copilot on a b-17 bomber.

Stiles is to fly with one of the replacement crews needed by the 8th air force's 91st bomber group.

The year before, two out of three air crewman did not survive their first 25 missions.

I am caught up in something pretty damn big, bigger than I can fathom,

much bigger than my own little dreams and preoccupations.

From now on, I'll be holding hands with death.

On the morning of his first mission,

Stiles and the rest of his crew are awakened at 0200.

By 0330, they are in a brick and tin hut for their mission briefing.

An hour later, he's making final preparations.

All I can think is, "damn, this is it."

We are going to kill Germans

If the allies are to have any chance of successfully landing on Normandy's beaches,

they must first dominate the skies over the English channel and France.

To do this, they must strike at the heart of the German air force.

Bert's b-17 joins a massive fleet of bombers destined for western Germany.

Their mission is to target factories where German fighters are being produced.

When you take a quick look at our formation,

it always looks good, like static death, the planes just hanging there in the air.

But it's work to keep one in position,

especially when you've only done it a couple of times.

Flying at 25,000 feet, Stiles, like all b-17 crewmen,

must cope with tremendous physical discomfort.

Temperatures in the aircraft can drop to 60 degrees below zero.

To avoid frostbite, crewmen wear bulky electrically heated suits that

impair mobility and reaction time.

After nearly two hours in the air,

the b-17's navigator confirms that they have crossed into Germany and are nearing their target.

This is it.

We're over the fatherland.

I suppose I'm a pacifist at heart.

The Germans see the same sun and the same moon as I do,

and their sky is as blue and beautiful as ours.

But those people down there are Nazis.

As Stiles and the other planes approach the target area,

German anti-aircraft batteries unleash a barrage of flak.

It looks harmless, but inside, it's hell.

The waist gunner asks, "are we going through that?

Now we're in it, surrounded by little black puffs of death.

Another pilot radios in that his navigator is all shot to hell.

I can hear the terror in his voice.

Up here in this blue sky, a man is dying.

It's pretty hard to believe.

I wonder what plane he's in.

After 30 minutes, Stiles's b-17 makes it through the flak.

It's time to unload their 5,000 pounds of ordnance.

These 1,000-pound bombs, these big ugly dead things,

come alive just long enough to kill everybody around.

God, what the hell happens when they connect?

I come from a land where bombs never fall.

What do I know about it?

After six hours, Stiles's plane returns to base.

Three other planes in his group of 30 do not.

In all, 30 men are lost.

And I have never been so tired, but my heart won't stop pounding.

The feeling is indescribable just to be here still breathing.

London is still one of Hitler's favorite targets, but I want to see the city.

Granted a short leave from their d-day training,

Charles Scheffel and a handful of men from the 39th visit London.

It's Scheffel's first time in the city and his first view of the appalling destruction that

has been brought on by almost four years of Hitler's wrath.

I began to realize that this war is dirty.

It's a deadly business that destroys everything and anyone in its path.

There's rubble everywhere.

It unnerves me to see civilians in combat conditions like this.

This wicked man, the repository and embodiment of many forms of soul-destroying hatreds,

this monstrous product of former wrongs and shame,

has now resolved to try to break our famous island race

by a process of indiscriminate slaughter and destruction.

What he has done is to kindle a fire in British hearts here

and all over the world

which will glow long after all traces of the conflagration

he has caused in London have been removed.

The will of the people is amazing.

Everywhere I look, there's this grim determination to prevail.

People are cleaning out from under the destruction, opening up their stores for business.

Hell, even the theater's full.

We walked down to get on a subway, and I cannot believe what I am seeing.

There was bunk after bunk after bunk, and who's laying in them?

Little kids.

Four and five, six-year-old kids stacked in this bunk

all along the subway loading station to escape from being

killed by bombs that were being dropped. I will remember that day.

Seeing that kind of courage, you realize these people are anything but ordinary.

It makes me so thankful that my family is not going through the same thing.

He has lighted a fire which will burn with a steady and consuming flame

until the last vestiges of Nazi Germany

have been burnt out of Europe.

By 1700 hours, we have a beachhead of about 500 yards.

Not a hell of a lot for one day's work.

Three miles off the coast of Kwajalein in the central pacific,

Jack Werner grows impatient.

The army combat engineer has been assigned to supply duties

and ordered to remain on his ship until the beachhead is secured.

After waiting for hours, we finally get the order.

We lurch onto the beach and start stacking dynamite a few yards in.

I see no enemy troops, only devastation.

Our troops are dusty and tired.

They rest next to the distorted bodies of dead Japs.

The stench is pervasive, but the guys don't seem to mind.

Looking at Japanese soldiers heaped in piles,

It certainly, for the first time,

shocked me into the mass disaster,

destruction of man and material that war can bring about,

because it was something that I hadn't,

that I hadn't yet experienced.

We kill everyone in our bombs' way, and we never even see them die.

The only death we see is the death of our friends.

For the past month, b-17 copilot Bert Stiles

has been flying two to three missions a week.

The pace of operations is frantic, and casualties are mounting.

Last month alone, the 8th air force lost 409 aircraft.

Now, with the Normandy invasion looming, the 8th air force is stepping up their campaign.

They are hitting targets deep inside Germany

in an effort to keep the Luftwaffe away from the coast of northern France.

Everyone around me is trying to wisecrack and not give a damn.

But nobody is very funny, and everybody gives very much a big damn.

Stiles is on a mission to Berlin,

one of the most heavily defended targets in the Third Reich.

I guess the whole idea is just to kill as many Germans as possible.

And if any women or little kids get in the way and get their legs torn off or their faces caved in,

well, tough shit for them.

Unknown to Stiles and the rest of the crews,

the real purpose of their mission is to function

as a form of aerial bait to draw out the German Luftwaffe,

70% of which is stationed in the area around Berlin.

Once the enemy planes engage the b-17s,

squadrons of the newly developed long-range American p-51 fighters

can execute a surprise attack and decimate them.

Allied command considers the loss of b-17 crewmen a strategic sacrifice.

Their bombing run complete,

Stiles and his squadron are turning back toward England when,

suddenly, dozens of enemy fighters appear.

My god, they're everywhere, coming out of the sun from all points on the compass.

This is insanity.

All I can do is ask lady luck to fly in close.

Every fighter left in the Luftwaffe is opening up on us.

There's not much we can do but take it.

On a bombing mission over Berlin,

Bert Stiles and his squadron of b-17s are ambushed by the Luftwaffe.

The weight of the flying fortress and its relatively slow cruising speed make evasive maneuvers impossible.

There is nothing the crewmen can do except hold formation and wait for the help of their p-51 escorts.

One crew gone.

I feel trapped, a target in a flying coffin.

A shell bursts outside our waist window.

Damn, that's close.

Thank god for the mustangs.

If only I could be piloting one of those fighters.

I'd sell my soul to fly a p-51, instead of being trapped in this floating whale.

After nine hours in the sky over northern Europe, Stiles's bomber makes it back to England.

Out of the 459 Allied planes that attacked Berlin,

33 have been shot down, and a staggering 256 more are damaged.

482 airmen are missing and presumed dead.

Three of the guys I knew best have just gone down.

I don't feel nausea, just a sense of shock, a certain deadness inside.

This war is all hell and horror.

I don't see how it can ever straighten out.

It's so wonderful just to be alive, but it's also pretty dreadful,

because there are plenty who aren't.

All I know is, if I have to climb back in that bomber,

I will beat my brains out on the instrument panel.

The landings are going like clockwork now.

Men lie on deck sunning themselves and reading the funnies,

while a few hundred yards away, others face enemy fire and possible death.

It's surreal.

After watching the 7th infantry division overwhelm the Japanese defenders on Kwajalein,

sergeant Jack Werner is shuttling from island to island,

delivering ammunition and doing his part to help secure the rest of the atoll.

On one small island, a company is dynamiting the last of the blockhouses.

We have Jap-American translators talking to them, trying to get them to surrender.

Then there's a shattering explosion.

Rather than suffer the shame of surrendering,

they've set fire to their supplies and blown themselves up.

There are no survivors.

After four days of fighting, the Americans take Kwajalein atoll.

With this one battle, the Allies have pushed the pacific front 500 miles closer to Japan

and now have a staging area from which to launch a massive assault on the Mariana islands.

The battle is over.

Not that I did much to win it.

As we pull out of Kwajalein, I make a promise to myself: I will never sit on the sidelines again.

We're all wondering what's coming.

At their training base in England,

lieutenant Charles Scheffel and the rest of the officers of the 39th infantry regiment

have been called into a briefing with their regimental commander.

D-day is drawing closer, and tension is high.

He paces back and forth, just like coach Iba used to before a big basketball game.

"Gentlemen, we are about to embark on the greatest invasion in history.

We're going to liberate Europe. Some of us will make it, and some of us will not.

But," he says, "it don't make no difference.

It's something that we got to do."

After a pause, one of the guys behind me says,

"Colonel, it might not make a difference to you,

but it makes a hell a lot of difference to us." The old man bursts out laughing.

We all do.

You said the word "inspiring"?

That's a great patriotic thought.

I don't think anybody was inspired.

I think everybody was asking "How in the hell did I ever get in this situation?

And how do I survive it?"

It's gotten to be a joke. Each time they wake us up in the night for a mission,

someone calls out: "It's D-Day." But it never is.

B-17 copilot Bert Stiles and his bomber crew are roused after getting only 30 minutes of sleep.

A chaplain is conducting a special service.

Something's up.

The officers are all in their pressed uniforms.

I get the feeling that we're close to big things.

Our base commanding officer says:" This is it.

This is the invasion. You're flying in support of ground troops."

And just like that, all our weariness evaporates.

The rain rattles on the skin of the plane.

Normally, with this weather, the flight would be scrubbed, but not today.

Nothing can interfere with today.

On the morning of June 6, 1944,

Stiles and the entire 8th air force are among 11,000 Allied aircraft

sent to pummel strategic targets on and behind the invasion beaches.

It's a trucking job, pure and simple.

But there's nothing simple about it.

Plenty can go wrong.

The breath is tense in my throat.

The roads are clogged with every sort of vehicle imaginable, from bicycles to half-tracks.

Lieutenant Charles Scheffel and the men of the 39th infantry regiment are inching their way

through crowded English roads and streets

en route to the rendezvous point from which they will ship out to Normandy.

Scheffel and the other veterans will act as reinforcements.

The 35-mile trip takes four hours.

But the British civilians are waving and cheering and handing up little cakes and drinks.

Nobody seems to mind that our trucks are clipping the corners right off their buildings as we creep through the narrow streets.

Our division is gonna go in the second wave on whichever beach is the most secure.

Waiting to go into battle is sometimes as tough as the fight itself.

We're up here cut off from the whole thing by a layer of clouds.

All I can see are a few ships shooting like mad at something.

But the mist is closing in again.

There's not a speck of flak.

I guess all the flak guns are leveled, waiting for our guys on the ground.

Soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the Allied expeditionary force,

you are about to embark upon the great crusade toward

which we have striven these many months.

The eyes of the world are upon you.

The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.

You will bring about the destruction of the German war machine,

the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe,

and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one.

Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battle hardened.

He will fight savagely.

The tide has turned.

The free men of the world are marching together to victory.

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle.

We will accept nothing less than full victory.