Original subtitles

Previously, on World War II in HD.

I motioned to everyone, ordering them to lay down a covering fire.

In the pacific, first sergeant Jack Werner takes charge

after his commanding officer is killed during the invasion of Leyte.

I was only in command for an hour, but I feel I did reasonably well.

At least I didn't get anybody killed.

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

GI Rockie Blunt battles the elements during "the battle of the bulge".

I tried to get out of the hole,

and my legs were frozen into a block of ice almost to the knees.

And army nurse June Wandrey loses hope that the end of the war is near.

One thing is sure, I'm not going home for Christmas this year.

What do you do when you run out of tears?

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.

The national broadcasting company humbly asks admission to your homes

in this, our hour of national sorrow.

Crowds are lining constitution avenue from here to the White House.

Many an American is standing with us today.

All the soldiers and servicemen in the crowd stand firmly at attention.

And now, the caisson will start its solemn sorrowful procession, through Washington.

On April 14, 1945, America bids farewell to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

the man who has led the country for the past 13 years.

At a time like this, words are inadequate.

The world knows it has lost a heroic champion of justice and freedom.

In his infinite wisdom, Almighty God has seen fit to take from us a great man

who loved and was beloved by all, humanity.

For the past four years, President Roosevelt steadfastly guided America through the war.

During his presidency, the Allies have succeeded in

containing the infectious spread of Hitler's armies

and are now, closing in on Berlin.

In the pacific, American forces have pushed the Japanese out of the central pacific

and are now within striking distance of Tokyo.

But there is still fierce fighting ahead, and now

it is up to the inexperienced Harry S. Truman

Roosevelt's Vice President for only 82 days, to lead the country to final victory.

Tragic fate has thrust upon us grave responsibility.

We must carry on.

Our departed leader never looked backward.

He looked forward and moved forward.

That is what he would want us to do.

That is what America will do.

There is a lot of fighting.

Mainly thundering mortars.

And it makes me feel on the edge.

First sergeant Jack Werner is on Okinawa with army's 13th combat engineering battalion.

After landing with the 2nd wave of assault force on April 1st,

Werner and his platoon help secure one of the island's main airfields.

Now the soldiers of the 10th army, along with two marine divisions,

are pushing south, where the fighting has turned ferocious.

For the past five weeks, US forces have struggled to advance toward the Sheri Line,

the primary Japanese defensive line of resistance.

Along its rocky highlands, thousands of well-armed Japanese troops,

concealed in caves and bunkers, are unleashing artillery

concentrations unlike anything yet experienced in the pacific war.

We receive a communiqué that a Jap counterattack is beginning at any moment.

They're close.

We can feel it.

Artillery and mortars are exploding around us.

One of my men goes down and then another.

The situation is desperate.

Werner and a dozen men in his platoon are wounded, all riddled with mortar fragments.

I am dazed but I am conscious enough to realize the

damage that has been done to my men and to me.

Everyone is wounded, and two of my men are gone.

The next thing I know, I am on a jeep.

On a litter, and was taken back to a medic, to a medical tent.

And that was a horrible sight, I must say.

It was so full of wounded men, and blood all over.

It was just awful.

And I think when I got on the operating table

I, that was the end of it. I didn't notice anything anymore.

I was out.

No one wants to be the last guy killed in a war, especially so close to the end.

GI Rockie Blunt is with the 84th infantry division.

After crossing the Rhine more than a month ago,

Allied forces have begun the drive eastward across Nazi Germany.

Their destination is the Elbe river, the last natural barrier before Berlin.

Only days earlier, the Soviet Army encircled Berlin and

began launching devastating attacks on the capital.

Hitler's days are numbered.

We used to advance as little as 10 miles in a day,

but now, some days we're covering 60 miles.

The mighty German war machine is crumbling.

Our convoy stops abruptly outside a small town.

We can't hear a firefight in the distance, and there's no traffic up ahead.

Why are we stopping here in the middle of nowhere?

Looking across a field, I realize I've seen places like this before in photographs.

Only now, the faces behind the barbed wire fence are real.

Now I know that the rumors we've been hearing are true.

Now, I know why we are here.

The nauseating smell of human carnage.

If this isn't hell on earth, I don't know what else would be.

GI Rockie Blunt has just entered a sub-camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp complex.

Since ascending to power in 1933, Adolf Hitler

has been systematically rounding up and exterminating Jews and minority groups

he deems undesirable, such as homosexuals and the disabled.

It was part of his master plan to create a true Aryan race.

He called it "the final solution".

It's difficult to differentiate between the living and the dead.

Only the haunting eyes can tell me if a skeleton is alive.

Concentration camps are in a category all by themselves.

As far as atrocities, they were of such magnitude that it is beyond comprehension.

It's more than the human mind can even conceive of.

When you first come across it, you look, but you don't see.

You listen, but you don't hear.

You smell, but you don't know what you're smelling.

We talked to them.

In my very limited German, I say to them: "We're Americans. We will save you."

But they don't say anything.

They don't yell. They don't cheer.

They just stand there silently.

They're beyond making a noise.

They're beyond having a voice.

I meet a prisoner.

I can hardly hear him when he talks.

He tells me the German doctors at the camp conducted experiments on his throat

and he no longer has a voice box.

I ask him what nationality he is.

" (German) " he says.

"I am a German Jew."

He takes me to Das Crematorium and insists I go inside.

Skulls, bones, and ashes are everywhere.

Fingernails which had been gouged out are still stuck in the walls.

He tells me: " (German) " "Don't forget."

I couldn't even if I wanted to.

These tortured souls hardly resemble humans.

It's so very, very sad.

Assigned to Lieutenant General George Patton's third army,

22-year-old Wisconsin native June Wandrey is at Allach,

the largest sub-camp of Dachau.

The camp was liberated weeks ago.

But with more than 32,000 survivors in need of medical care,

nurses like June are bused to Dachau from a nearby army camp.

I'm on duty, caring for a hundred corpse-like patients, wrecks of humanity.

Their bodies are riddled with disease:

Macerated skin drawn over their bones, eyes sunken in wide sockets, hair shaved off.

Poles, Czechs, Russians, Slavs, Dutch, Hungarians, Germans.

I understand so few words.

But when I do something to make them more

comfortable or give them a little food or a smile,

their gratitude tears at my heart.

When I hand out tiny pieces of chocolate,

the poor souls are so excited and pleased.

They just grab my hand and hold it.

They wrap it in toilet paper and hide it under their sheets or mattresses.

The poor souls still can't believe that they will get more later.

You have to gently shake some of the patients to see if they're still alive.

Their breathing is so shallow.

Each time, I breathe a wee prayer for them.

"God, are you there?

God, where are you?"

The destruction is part of our new life.

As we head east, passing through towns leveled by our bombing campaigns,

it looks as if all of Europe has been decimated.

GI Rockie Blunt and the 84th infantry division are pressing east at a fast pace.

American forces are closing in on the town of Torgau at the Elbe river,

where they are to meet up with the Soviet Army, putting them

one step closer to choking the Germans into submission.

The National Broadcasting Company interrupts

this program to bring you a special broadcast.

President Truman has just announced that the Anglo-American

and Russian Armies have met in the heart of Nazi Germany.

East and west have met.

This is the news for which the whole Allied world has been waiting.

Nazi Germany, tottering to her final collapse, has been split clean in half.

The forces of liberation have joined hands.

The meeting of East and West is a triumph.

But for some American soldiers, like Rockie Blunt,

the joy of the moment is short-lived.

General Dwight Eisenhower decides to halt his troops at the Elbe river

and focus on pummeling the Germans to the southwest.

This means that Berlin, Germany's capital city,

will be left for the Russians to take.

Everyone I talk to is in shock and disbelief.

Berlin has been our main goal for these past few months,

and now we won't be going there.

So many of our men had died on the way there.

It seems strange I won't be setting foot in the German capital.

As the Soviet army advances through the streets of Berlin,

Reich's chancellor Adolf Hitler marries his long-time mistress, Eva Braun.

He waits until the Soviets are only blocks away

and then shoots himself in the head.

This is London calling.

Here is a news flash.

The German radio has just announced that Hitler is dead.

Here's a special news bulletin.

The British Broadcasting Company has just reported

that Adolf Hitler died at the Reich chancellery in the heart of burning Berlin.

With Hitler gone and the capital of the Third Reich now a smoldering ruin,

the men and women of the Allied, including GI Rockie Blunt,

know that the end of the war is upon them.

I guess I'll be heading home soon.

After everything I've been through, that will be a major accomplishment by any account.

But there's still so many unanswered questions, so much I'm uncertain of.

One thing I am certain of,

I have to put the horrors of the past behind me

and build a new life, a life of peace, not war.

This is the BBC home service.

We're interrupting programs to make the following announcement:

It is understood that in accordance with arrangements between the three great powers,

an official announcement will be broadcast by the Prime Minister at 3:00 tomorrow.

In view of this fact, tomorrow, Tuesday, will be treated as "Victory in Europe" day.

After nearly six long years, the war in Europe is finally over.

May 8, 1945, is declared "Victory in Europe" day.

Spontaneous celebrations erupt throughout the world.

French soldiers pick me up, hoist me on their shoulders,

and carry me down the Champs-Elysees, shouting: "Vive La France! Vive La America!"

After four years of service in five countries,

US army nurse June Wandrey is on furlough in Paris on VE day.

We are in the heart of Paris.

The crowd is nearly hysterical.

Everyone is out on the streets,

planes zooming overhead in huge formations.

All the important brass are there: de Gaulle...

And here I am.

A very great crowd has collected already,

thousands upon thousands of people gathered to

share this historic day with the King and Queen.

Listen to the crowd.

The last communiqué of World War II is in.

The Russian people were told for the first time of Germany's unconditional surrender.

Our rejoicing is sober and subdued by a supreme

consciousness of the terrible price we have paid

to rid the world of Hitler and his evil band.

Let us not forget, my fellow Americans, our victory is but half-won.

The West is free, but the East is still in bondage

to the treacherous tyranny of the Japanese.

When the last Japanese division has surrendered

unconditionally, then only will our fighting job be done.

I'm lying here, watching the show, so to speak,

the kamikazes attacking our carriers and our carriers, our destroyers, and our ships.

It's a very frightening situation.

As Japanese Kamikazes continue to strike the American forces off Okinawa,

Jack Werner is evacuated to a hospital ship.

While fighting near the Sheri line, he was hit in the back and jaw by mortar fragments.

It is may 8th, but the young Austrian Jewish immigrant

has yet to hear the news of Germany's surrender.

I'm incapacitated.

I can't move.

I can't get up from the litter.

I can't do anything.

If the Jap planes attack me, it will be over.

Eventually the sailors arrive and they carry me toward the landing craft.

And from the landing craft to the hospital ship hope.

When we arrived at the boat, there was nothing

but white-clad soldiers and white-clad nurses

and white-clad doctors and white, beautiful white linen

bunks into which they dumped me after tearing off my dirty bloodstained clothes.

And this was the last I'd seen of Okinawa,

because soon thereafter, I felt that we were moving, and we were leaving.

While Werner is evacuated back to the States,

the battle on Okinawa continues for more than a month.

By the end of May, American forces capture Sheri Castle.

Weeks later, they overcome the Japanese in a vicious week-long battle on Kunishi Ridge.

Days later, Okinawa is declared secure.

With over 12,000 US soldiers, sailors, and Marines killed or missing in action

and another 36,000 wounded, Okinawa is the bloodiest campaign of the pacific war.

And yet, the US military still has plans to invade the Japanese home islands.

There can be no peace in the world until the military power of Japan is destroyed,

with the same completeness as was the power of European dictators,

Code-named "operation downfall", the first phase

of the invasion of Japan is planned for November.

Estimates are that downfall will take over one year and involve 5 million Allied troops

with some casualty estimates as high as 1 million.

After the staggering losses suffered on Okinawa,

the White House fears that a war-weary American

public may not be able to stomach the numbers.

On July 26th, in the middle of a two-week conference in Germany,

The Allies issue an ultimatum to the Japanese.

Titled "the Potsdam Declaration", it calls for Japan's unconditional surrender.

But the Japanese reject the declaration.

The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war,

in order to save the lives of thousands

and thousands of young Americans.

We shall continue to use it until we completely destroy Japan's power to make war.

With Hiroshima in ruins, Truman warns the Japanese to surrender.

He receives no response.

Three days later, a second atomic bomb is dropped on Nagasaki.

This footage of the blast was shot at 31,000 feet.

The cities destroyed, but the Japanese are still unwilling to yield to the Allies.

A third atomic strike is considered.

The fate of the pacific war remains unresolved.

From the mutual newsroom in New York,

Tokyo radio says: "Acceptance of Potsdam Proclamation coming soon." One moment please.

This is not official. This is from the Tokyo radio.

Six days after America drops the second atomic bomb

on Japan and one day after a bombing raid on Tokyo,

The Japanese government notifies the Allies that it accepts the Potsdam Declaration

on one condition: That the Imperial Emperor Hirohito retain sovereign status.

Truman consents.

President Harry Truman has announced the end of the war.

The victory has been won. It's official from the White House.

Japan surrenders. Japan surrenders.

They will lay down their arms.

There it is, the news you've been waiting for. It's over, all over.

This is it! This is it, friends.

The job has been done in the Western world and on the land and seas of the Orient,

and let's not forget it.

This is the NBC mobile unit in the heart and

center and the pulsing focus of a giant nation,

on Times Square in New York City.

I look uptown over a foaming, seething, writhing mass of faces

lifted joyously and brilliantly and gloriously

happy at the final conclusion of a desperate war

which has seen its closing days in the desperate day or three

or four of anxiety, turmoil, anticipation, doubt, fear.

Are these people happy? That's the only way to express it.

Are you happy? Yeah!

This is undoubtedly one of the most incredible days of my life.

At long last, I am home.

After recuperating from his wounds, Jack Werner is in New York City.

He has been discharged from the army.

Arriving at Pennsylvania station, I am mobbed by everyone and anyone who comes through.

It is a wonderful feeling, after everything we have been through.

And my reaction was very emotional, I must say,

as it was a wonderful thing that happened.

It turned out to be, you know, VJ day, and Times Square was exploding with people,

and everybody was on the street kissing and hugging each other.

It was very, very nice.

Three weeks after VJ day,

representatives of the Allied powers and Japan

meet on board the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo bay

to sign the formal instrument of surrender.

Elements of this footage have not been seen before.

Filmed by a sailor positioned in the ship's superstructure,

General Macarthur and Admiral Nimitz walk toward history.

My fellow countrymen, today the guns are silent.

A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won.

The skies no longer rain death.

Men everywhere walk upright in the sunlight.

The entire world lies quietly at peace.

Over the next few weeks and months,

millions of Americans who served in the armed forces begin the journey home.

Nurse June Wandrey arrives in Virginia almost two months after VJ day.

Home at last, five months late.

We disembark into a shabby, dirty area,

no bands, no flags, no welcoming crowds.

It's a sad ending.

Our lives have been permanently altered.

People who stayed home will never understand us.

But then we hear a sweet chorus of "welcome home"

from several gray ladies bearing trays of milk and cookies.

And suddenly, the lump in my throat is too big to swallow.

Tears spill down my face.

I'm home.

In the nearly four years that the United States fought in World War II,

about 16 million Americans served in the armed forces.

Over 415,000 never made it home.

Most were killed in combat.

Many remain missing in action.

For those who survived, the echoes of the war experience linger for a lifetime.

In my opinion, war is a terrible thing.

I never thought in my life, in my young life, that I would see what I saw

and have to go through what I went through.

Every cross I see in a military cemetery represents a young life

between 20 and 40 years of age. That's a waste.

That shouldn't be.

The people who create those situations are never the ones that are out there fighting.

I detest that. I hate it.

War is stupid, crazy.

We've got to have love on our planet.

There is a pride in being a veteran.

I know that being a veteran sets me apart from millions of other people

who did not sacrifice so much of their life and their mentality

and their emotions for our country.

Of that, I'm very proud.

What is the greatest generation?

The greatest generation was everybody who worked hard

to provide the means by which we were able to win this war.

The greatness encompassed the country as well, the whole country.

It's all of us, not just the military.

The spirit of man has awakened.

The soul of man has gone forth.

Grant us the wisdom and the vision to comprehend the greatness of man's spirit

that suffers and endures so hugely for a goal beyond his own brief span.

We are all of us children of earth.

Grant us that simple knowledge.

If our brothers are oppressed, then we are oppressed.

If they hunger, we hunger.

If their freedom is taken away, our freedom is not secure.

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.

And in that faith, let us march,

march toward the clean world our hands can make.

Amen.