Original subtitles

Previously, on World War II in HD.

I try to orient myself, but I'm lost.

During his first mission in a combat zone, rookie

GI Rockie Blunt loses his way in Nazi territory

and comes face to face with the enemy.

I don't have a choice.

I approach him from behind.

And hit him hard over the head with my pistol,

and when he fell, I slit his throat.

While in the pacific. I see mortars hitting a few hundred yards away.

Marine Nolen Marbrey is wounded in action on Peleliu.

I'm falling into a daze.

And correspondent Robert Sherrod is on Iwo Jima

where he witnesses one of the most iconic moments in the war to date.

If we can capture that vertical monstrosity, we can do anything.

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.

Mr. Chief Justice, Mr. Vice President, my friends:

As I stand here today, having taken the solemn oath of office,

in the presence of my fellow countrymen, in the presence of our God,

I know that it is America's purpose that we shall not fail.

As Franklin Delano Roosevelt takes the oath of office on January 20, 1945,

he becomes the only President in American history to be elected to four terms.

But despite this unprecedented achievement,

there is relatively little fanfare in the streets of Washington.

With the nation focused on the continuing war effort,

Roosevelt cancels the traditional post inaugural parade and evening celebrations.

For more than three grueling years, FDR has led the nation in war.

Now it seems he is finally on the verge of leading America to victory.

But as the Axis forces ramp up for a final defensive stand,

the road to freedom will be grueling.

We Americans of today, together with our allies,

are passing through a period of supreme test.

It is a test of our courage, of our resolve,

of our wisdom, of our essential Democracy.

If we meet that test successfully and honorably,

we shall perform a service of historic importance,

of historic importance which men and women and children will honor throughout all time.

In the Ardennes Forest near the Belgium-German border,

almost 1/4 of a million German troops, spearheaded by 600

tanks, launch a surprise attack against the American lines.

It is Hitler's desperate final offensive,

his last chance to change the tide of a losing war.

Thinly spread and undersupplied, the Americans are overwhelmed.

Within days, the Germans push them back almost 40 miles,

creating a bulge in the American lines.

The Americans must hold the Germans until reinforcements arrive.

But with severe winter storms setting in and temperatures dropping to below zero,

the situation for the Americans goes from bad to worse.

Our eyes are all focused on the woods,

our ears cocked for any sound of the enemy.

Boston native Rockie Blunt and the army's 84th infantry division

are occupying foxholes carved out of ice and snow.

For days, they have succeeded in holding their positions against the Germans.

Our enemy isn't the Germans as much as it is the weather.

It started snowing the day we got here, and it hasn't stopped since.

I'm constantly covered with a blanket of snow and ice.

It's so cold, I can't even breathe.

Blunt and many of the 600,000 troops fighting

in the Ardennes Forest and the Alsace region

are wearing the same clothes

they were in when they arrived in Europe back in the summer and fall months.

While some Allied units received winter gear,

others, like Blunt's, did not due to shortages and miscommunication.

We don't have rubber overshoes.

We don't have overcoats.

We don't have gloves or scarves.

When one of our men goes down, there's nothing else we can do.

We strip our own dead.

It is a very difficult thing to steal from a dead GI, an American.

You never touched his watch. You never touched his wallet.

You never touched anything personal. But anything that had been issued by the army,

you stripped him of it, because you kept saying to yourself:

"The poor bastard, he doesn't need it anymore."

I do, I've got to try and stay alive another couple of days.

I can't help but wonder, when will it be my turn to be picked over?

When will I be the next dead GI?

This next operation looks to be the most decisive of them all,

the logical finish to what we started on Tarawa,

the whole damn central pacific campaign.

At least this time, no one's promising a short battle.

Combat correspondent Robert Sherrod is with Admiral Chester Nimitz's massive flotilla

in the anchorage of Ulithi, an atoll in the Caroline Islands.

For the past two years, Sherrod has been

covering the pacific war for the "Time and Life" magazine,

reporting from the front at Tarawa, Saipan, and Iwo Jima.

Now he's preparing for the invasion of Okinawa,

the next campaign in the push toward Japan.

Today all us correspondents are on the Admiral's command ship

to learn the details of operation iceberg.

As expected, it's going to be the biggest thing we've attempted in the pacific

and the last stop before Tokyo.

Located only 350 miles south of Japan,

Okinawa will provide the Americans with a staging area for the men and materials

necessary to launch an invasion of the Japanese mainland.

Defending the island are more than 100,000 Japanese

and conscripted Okinawan soldiers.

If they are to save their homeland from attack,

they must stop the Americans from seizing Okinawa.

Expecting intense resistance, the Americans have amassed a landing force larger

than the one that assaulted Normandy on D-Day.

Over 1,500 vessels carrying 183,000 American troops will converge on Okinawa.

I've asked to tag along with the commanders of the 6th marines, 6th division,

the same guys I was with when we invaded Saipan.

No matter how many times you're a part of a landing like this, you're never ready.

This time, the stakes seem bigger, and so does the invasion force.

But yet somehow I still feel uneasy,

as if we're not going in big enough.

Nobody knows what the hell to make of it.

The early reports are we've taken minimal casualties from isolated enemy snipers.

Two killed, nine wounded.

This is hard to believe.

Landing with the commanding general of the 6th marine

division hours after the first wave of invaders,

Robert Sherrod arrives on Okinawa.

Along the beaches, nobody's digging foxholes.

Everybody's standing, not a care in the world.

Tanks charge up the hills, and bulldozers cut inland to make roads.

It seems impossible that we've surprised them.

But they must be here somewhere.

Almost immediately, two army divisions move inland and overrun

Kadena airfield to the south of the Bishi Gawa river.

Meanwhile two Marine divisions take the Yontan airfield to the north.

By noon, Okinawa's two main airstrips are in the hands of the Americans.

Sherrod travels to Yontan to report from

a command post along the newly established front lines.

When he arrives, he sees hundreds of native

Okinawans turning themselves over to the Marines.

This is not the fanatical opposition we expected.

These natives seem to be the most miserable people who inhabit the earth.

Considered inferior by their Japanese occupiers,

the Okinawan people have been subjected to starvation, torture,

and even murder at the hands of the Japanese.

Those who managed to escape eagerly seek refuge with the Americans.

Many of them have leprosy.

Others suffer from malnutrition.

Even those who believed the Japs when they said the barbarous Americans would murder them

are now grateful for the food they receive.

A few miles from Sherrod and the refugees,

newly promoted Corporal Nolen Marbrey and the 1st marine division

are on the outskirts of Yontan airfield.

As the first day of the invasion draws to a close, the men are on edge.

The Japanese are notorious for attacking at night,

and the Americans fear they are easy targets.

I see a glint of light and then another.

The Japs are coming.

Someone nearby shouts: "Oh, my god. What have we done?"

I can't believe it.

I expected Jap troops. Instead the ground is littered with dead civilians.

The corpsmen are out tending to the wounded, those who can be helped, anyway.

Attempting to escape the Japanese under the cover of darkness,

a number of native Okinawans unknowingly wandered in front of the Marine lines.

Believing they were under a banzai attack,

Marbrey and the Marines opened fire.

A corpsman to my left pulls a baby from his dead mother's arms.

Three or four feet away lay an old woman,

her hands clenching a girl of five or so.

It's a horrible sight.

My men are vomiting and convulsing.

I pull myself together for the sake of my men.

"It can't be helped." I tell them.

"We are fighting for our lives in a foreign land.

It's kill or be killed. You understand?"

"But I can't help but think to myself:

Oh, my God.

What have we done?"

We've been out here for three days and nights.

My face is frozen.

I can't feel my legs.

The longer I remain here, the more I fear I will freeze to death.

Rockie Blunt and the 84th infantry division are

enduring the frozen hell of the Ardennes Forest.

They're still awaiting a German counterattack.

Since the battle in the Ardennes began two weeks ago,

the winter weather has incapacitated both combatants,

handicapping American airpower

and constricting the mobility of the German assault force.

Temperatures are well below freezing,

and the cold is claiming lives and limbs.

This is beyond what any man should be forced to endure.

If I wasn't already frozen to death,

I'd let myself wonder when this will end.

I don't want to close my eyes, but I have no choice.

I'm too exhausted.

When I open my eyes, it might be morning.

I'm not sure.

I tried to get out of the hole, and my legs were frozen into a block of ice,

up just almost to the knees.

And when I yelled for help cause I couldn't stand up and that, my,

other soldiers in my unit came by with bayonets

and started chopping the ice away from my legs

to try and free me from this solid coating of ice in the bottom of the defile.

And when they finally lifted me bodily out of the hole,

with ice still clinging to my legs,

they were trying to stand me up, and as soon as they did,

I'd collapse and fall down. I could not stand up.

And they put me in an ambulance and took me away.

Rockie Blunt is evacuated to a hospital a mile behind the American lines.

There, doctors diagnose him with a condition known as "trench foot".

Caused by cold, unsanitary conditions,

trench foot can impair the flow of blood to the feet.

If untreated, the condition can lead to frostbite and,

in a worst-case scenario, amputation.

I heard two doctors talking about amputating my feet.

And I started crying like a baby, pleading with them: "Do not take my feet.

I'm a musician. I'm a drummer. I need my feet. Please, don't take my feet."

And this impassioned crying, they listened.

They said: "We'll give it another day or two and see if there's any improvement."

And there was a little improvement, apparently,

because they did not amputate, but they did keep me in the hospital

until I could stand up, and then I was immediately returned to my unit.

To this day, 65 years later, they haven't healed properly yet.

The first five days on Okinawa have been sensational.

We've unloaded twice as many supplies as expected.

Casualties are light too: 175 killed and less than 1,000 wounded.

After reporting from the front during the first days of the Okinawa invasion,

correspondent Robert Sherrod is on a ship anchored off the island.

He's filing a story for "Time" magazine

when the Japanese, who have been relatively silent, suddenly strike.

In an attempt to strand the 180,000 troops ashore,

the Japanese launch a vicious attack on the US fleet,

raining death from the skies.

Although they had first hurled Kamikazes at American war ships months earlier,

this time it's not just a few planes, but hundreds.

They blew themselves up on Attu.

They hurled themselves off cliffs on Saipan.

Now the Japs have finally put their mania for suicide to effective use.

Nobody but the Japanese could have combined such medieval religious fervor

with a machine as modern as the airplane.

For the next 48 hours, the Japanese launch nearly 900 aircraft.

They sink 11 US ships.

And damage another 22.

Over the next six weeks, more than 2,000 Japanese planes will attack the American fleet.

Nearly 5,000 US sailors will be killed.

Burning gasoline is around us.

The war isn't over.

The Kamikaze has become Japan's most lethal weapon against our navy.

For once, I'd feel safer on land.

Three days after barely surviving a Kamikaze raid

offshore, Robert Sherrod arrives back on Okinawa.

While he was offshore, army units began to push south toward the capital city of Naha,

where they are encountering heavy resistance.

Casualties onshore are rising,

especially among the army divisions on the southern line,

where the intensity of the opposition is increasing.

To help support the battered GIs, Marines from the north are redeployed south.

They are now approaching the main Japanese defensive position,

known as the Shuri Line.

Extending across the southern end of the island,

running from Naha on the west coast to Yonabaru on the east coast,

the Shuri Line runs through the rocky ridges and hills below Shuri castle.

There, heavily armed enemy defenders wait for the

Americans to walk into their fields of fire.

I have no desire to see any more shooting or get shot at.

I've been following the central pacific campaign for so long

that it sometimes feels like I've never written about anything except war.

After almost three years of reporting from the front lines,

Robert Sherrod decides his days in the combat zone are over.

All around me is the carnage of smashed and burned tanks.

I can't believe it, but it looks like we're beating the Germans in the Ardennes.

Four days after being medically evacuated from

the front lines in Belgium's Ardennes forest,

Rockie Blunt returns to the army's 84th infantry division.

While Blunt was recovering from a severe case of trench foot,

the Americans launched a large counteroffensive against the Germans.

As Allied air power struck the German supply lines,

American units pushed north while British units pushed south.

In early January, Hitler began to withdraw his forces,

and by the end of the month,

the engagement nicknamed: "the battle of the bulge" is declared over.

It is the largest and costliest battle ever fought by the US Army.

With more than 19,000 American soldiers killed

and over 60,000 captured or wounded.

Despite the considerable losses,

the surviving American forces are reinvigorated by the resounding victory.

The Allies are ready for the final push into German territory.

There are no front lines anymore,

no company or battalion boundaries, no safe or unsafe sectors.

The Germans may be everywhere, but so are we.

The tide has turned.

Now we are on the offensive and the Germans are on the run.

It's so close. We can feel it.

We can practically smell the end of the war.

We expect to keep striking to keep the enemy on the move,

to hit him again and again, to give him no rest,

and to drive through to that final objective, Berlin.

With Hitler's forces retreating,

President Roosevelt travels to a Black Sea resort near Yalta in the Crimea.

He is meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill

and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin.

The three Allied leaders are discussing plans for the final offensive against the Nazis.

They release a joint statement reiterating their determination to accept nothing less

than Hitler's unconditional surrender.

That we would not agree, that some slight crack

might appear in the solid wall of Allied unity,

a crack that would give him and his fellow gangsters

one last hope of escaping their just doom.

But Hitler has failed.

We're bypassing more villages, roads are less damaged,

signs that the Germans are in full retreat now.

In every town, white flags and bed sheets are draped from the windows.

Civilian resolve is collapsing,

and the mighty German war machine is crumbling in our path.

Rockie Blunt and the 84th infantry division are moving eastward

through German towns destroyed by Allied bombing raids.

Along the way, they accept the surrender of entire battalions

of German troops no longer willing or able to fight.

They haven't eaten in two days, and they just want to go home.

I translate for my captain, telling them if they walk to

the rear of our lines and turn in all their weapons and maps,

they'll get hot food. Then they can find their own way home.

An outburst of emotion sweeps through their ranks.

They start swarming over us with pictures of their wives, mothers, children.

Some even try to hug us or at least shake our hands.

These men want no part of the war.

They wanted to give up as fast as they could with minimum problem.

They were begging us for food.

Most every one of us gave our food, whatever we had.

They had absolutely nothing.

They're eager to go home, but I know they have no home to go to.

Their towns have been reduced to rubble.

While the Allies crush Hitler's plans for a thousand year Reich,

American forces in the pacific pound Japan's home islands from the air.

Three and a half years earlier, on December 7, 1941,

Japan brought America into the war when it attacked Pearl Harbor.

Now the Americans are launching b-29 bombing

missions every day, Targeting Japanese cities.

From 10,000 feet, the end appears near.

But on the ground, soldiers and Marines are entrenched in a

fight that's getting more vicious with each passing day.

The push south is cross-country and over hills.

If it wasn't for the mud, we would have been through days ago.

Corporal Nolen Marbrey and the 1st Marine division

are slowly battling south toward the Shuri Line.

Thousands of Japanese defenders are hidden in the

ridges and dug in to the concealed caves and bunkers.

From there they are able to subject the American forces

to intense volumes of artillery and machine gun fire.

Marbrey and the rest of the 1st marine division are ordered

to relieve the army's battered 27th infantry division.

The Jap front is close across the shallow valley.

We're fighting ridge to ridge. It isn't easy.

Being stuck in no-man's-land never is.

My foxhole buddy Hill silently taps me on the shoulder twice.

Something's going on.

Our scout spotted a bunch of Japs in a cave.

Sprinting back to our lines, the grenades detonate.

And all hell breaks loose.

Then from behind me, there's more gunfire, and then yet more gunfire in front of me.

Damn, what have we gotten into?

Marbrey is wounded by artillery fragments during

the firefight and evacuated from the front.

Taken to a hospital ship anchored off Okinawa, he is treated for head wounds.

Doctors determine that his injuries are too extensive and that he should be shipped home.

For Nolen Marbrey, the war is finally over.

Over at the White House, the flag is at half-mast.

It was just 10 minutes to 6 tonight, when the news was given to the world

The first reaction among troops was complete deep demure...

Everywhere there was the silent tribute to the passing of a great leader.

A war casualty as certainly as any soldier killed in battle.

On April 12, 1945, President Franklin Roosevelt

is at his retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia,

recuperating from exhausting travels overseas.

At 1 o'clock in the afternoon, FDR collapses in his living room.

By 3:35 pm, America's longest-serving president is dead.

The world paused in uncertainty for a few moments

today when the news was given to the world

that President Roosevelt had slept away,

news that stunned and suspended in immobility

for minutes the whole country, the whole world.

Millions of men and women stopped stock-still, unbelieving.

Under ordinary conditions, it would be exceedingly difficult to absorb.

Although rumors of Roosevelt's deteriorating health had persisted for over a year,

his sudden death stuns the nation and leaves the fate of the war uncertain.

The greatest casualty of the entire world is now suffered

by all the people of the world.