All language subtitles for [English (auto-generated)] 1945 What Happened At The End Of WWII The Year That Changed The World T

[Music]

1945 was a tumultuous year it saw Fierce

fighting peace and the beginnings of a

new world

order the Allies were determined to

inflict total defeat on their enemies at

any

cost but following Victory The Big Three

Britain America and the Soviet Union

fought each other for Supremacy the

shape of the world we live in today is

the legacy of events of

[Music]

1945 in this program we'll see a major

upset for the Western allies in

January how the Red Army launched the

biggest military offensive in history

and how in February British bombers took

off to pulverize German cities in a

series of controversial military

decisions full of behind the scenes

scheming the previous year had seen many

successful Allied

advances to the east of Germany the Red

Army rapidly recovered virtually all of

the land they had lost to the Nazis

on the Western Front the Allies had

landed on the Normandy beaches on D-Day

and then made fast progress through

northern Europe right up to the borders

of

Germany Paris had been liberated on the

25th of August

1944 a week later British soldiers

entered Brussels to a warm welcome and

by the start of 1945 Britain expected

their leader Churchill to take them to a

speedy victory in Europe

of course to people following the news

and the papers the breakout from

Normandy the advance towards the Rind

The Liberation of Paris all these things

did happen after a certain point so

quickly that it looked as if everything

would be rolled up by the end of

1944 but those in in charge Churchill

and his commanders in Chief and his War

cabinet knew that in fact the Germans

intended to fight every inch of the

way the Allies destroyed the German

armies in the West and then there's this

extraordinary period of Rapid Advance

right up almost to the rine and the

border of Germany and everyone thinks

the war will be over by Christmas well

of course it

isn't far from giving up in total

secrecy Hitler planned a

Counterattack this took the Allies

completely by

surprise in the depths of one of the

worst Winters on record Hitler amassed

200,000 men on the Belgian border hidden

in the thickly forested Arden area

on the 16th of December 1944 they

launched their attack on 83,000

unsuspecting American troops what became

known as the Battle of the Bulge was

Hitler's last desperate attempt to avert

defeat if anyone has said the Germans

are going to assemble a quarter of a

million men and a thousand tanks for a

surprise offensive in the west people

said they're mad and yet that's exactly

what Hitler does in the winter snow with

cloud cover so there's no air activity

by the allly side he bursts something

like 25 division on I think five

unsuspecting American divisions and

almost breaks through and his aim is to

try and get up to the the ports up

towards antp and split the British and

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Americans the Germans took 25,000

prisoners

American troops heard that the nazzis

were shooting and torturing captives one

of the Allied soldiers was Curtis

whiteway I carefully crawled up to the

scouts as they pointed ahead in the

trees one of our guys was hanging in the

trees spread eagle standing upright he

was twitching and his arms and legs were

tied to nearby trees he was totally nude

and the Germans had taken some kind of

torch they burned his eyes out he was

still

alive one of the men behind me cried out

put him out of his misery I realized

that this was a warning to us don't come

any further into Germany or this will

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description the Germans succeeded in

driving a bulge straight through the

Allies front line a counter offensive

was launched General Eisenhower in

command of the European operations put

the American General Bradley and

Britain's Montgomery in charge of

beating back the Germans Eisenhower

stands back and he says to Montgomery

you handle all the armies including

American armies to the north and he said

to Bradley in the South you handle all

the American armies in the South and

Eisenhower's coolness and ability to

delegate down to these two heavy weights

and these two are heavy weights actually

is what crushes the German offensive

that and lack of

fuel casualties were high on both sides

nearly 100,000 Germans and 80,000

Americans were killed missing or injured

this was the most costly battle the

Americans had fought in Northwestern

Europe by mid January 1945 the Germans

had been forced to withdraw from the

ardin

completely the consequences of this

battle stalled the Allies Advance into

Germany and delayed the end of the war

in

Europe part of the shock of the Arden

offensive is not just the psychological

shock of being attacked by an enemy you

think is defeated but it's also the

heavy casualties and the logistic

buildup for the push into Germany for

1945 is completely disrupted American

confidence had been severely bruised by

that experience after January 1945 they

were determined to move very cautiously

the Bulge offensive had slowed up the

Western allies while making it easier

for the Russians to drive much faster

and harder into

Germany but by mid January northern

Europe was in ruins the Western allies

put their plans to invade Germany on

hold but in the Soviet Union tanks

poured off the production lines so that

Stalin could launch a major new

offensive on the Eastern Front the

Russians were poised to launch the huge

offensive and vast armies have been

massed so the Russians had had four or

five months of building up their forces

because they had big difficulties there

wasn't anything like the road Network or

Road rail network that there was in the

west and every inch of the way they had

to build Railways and restore roads to

move supplies forward to enable their

millions of men to launch the offensive

so the Germans knew that they were

approaching the last

act for two long years the Red Army had

fought the Germans in the Soviet Union

as they began to reclaim their Homeland

the true horror of the Nazi occupation

slowly dawned on them

in Kiev they found that hundreds of

civilians had been killed by the fleeing

Germans as Soviet troops moved very fast

they came across even

worse scenes of bestial behavior and

this convinced Soviet troops if they

weren't already convinced that they were

facing an enemy

that had behaved in an utterly inhuman

fashion they didn't regard the

Germans as fellow members of the human

race and they themselves carried out a

campaign of pillage and

rape um that was pretty disgraceful many

Soviet soldiers have been encouraged to

keep Revenge Diaries through the past

few years by their political officers in

which they wrote down the Terrible

Things they'd seen the Germans do in

Russia so that they could extract

revenge and enter it in their Revenge

Ledger on the 12th of January in

freezing cold weather the Red Army

started a massive new offensive towards

Germany through Poland it began on the

Ukrainian

front 2 Days Later general zukov led the

main push from the Belarusian front the

Soviet Union succeeded in mobilizing a

massive force of over 6 million men an

amazing

feat by the 19th of January they had

taken the Polish Capital Warsaw fleeing

Germans had destroyed much of the city

34s of the buildings were in Ruins then

on the 27th of January the Red Army

entered

aitz the real horror of what they'd

found did not become widely known until

the war in Europe was

over meanwhile the Red Army continued

its Relentless Advance on Germany one of

the paradoxes about the Red Army was

that it was an extraordinary mixture of

the most Savage discipline and the most

ferocious indiscipline that I remember

meeting a Soviet tank officer called

kudrov uh who told me a story about his

driver who was completely illiterate

tartter um who one night he'd been left

on Watch and fell

asleep and K rush off woke him up and

said it's a firing squad for

you and he didn't mean it but his driver

knew very well that if kudru have

reported him it probably would be the

firing squad and the man fell helpus on

his knees and the next day the driver

came to kud rash off

and he said would he write a letter home

for him because he couldn't write

himself and kud ROV said yes he said I

I'll write a letter home saying how you

fell asleep on watch last night and

again the driver fell on his knees in

Terror because he said say anything you

like say anything but don't do it the

poor driver was killed in action 2 days

later at tremendous cost the Soviet

Union now occupied large parts of

Eastern Europe but Churchill was worried

by this turn of events Churchill hope to

bring Starin to a conference before the

Red Army was in any one of the Eastern

European capitals so that they could

discuss the future of Eastern Europe

with no force mure of Soviet tanks being

in every capital and he pleaded with

Stalin and Roosevelt let's have our

conference now and Stalin can and

understandably from his perspective said

no church will even the conference was

going to be h held in Jerusalem and S

said I can't fly my doctors said I can't

fly so church will send him the railway

timetable in those days you could take a

train but Stalin was an intensely

suspicious man and he thought that at

any time Roosevelt or Churchill might

play a trick on him might gang up on him

just as he would do to them if he

possibly could he loved to play roseval

off against Churchill and vice versa

Churchill felt very much that the

the

borders of postwar Europe would be

determined where the armies

met his fear was that communism which

was advancing with the Red Army steadily

would essentially advance to the

Atlantic by the end of January the

Allies had Germany surrounded but still

Hitler wouldn't give up the Nazis wanted

to fight to The Bitter End and the war

in Europe was far from over

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by the end of January 1945 the Americans

were making Headway in the Pacific

against the

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Japanese they had won a major sea Battle

capturing the strategically important

island of Ley in the

Philippines but the outcome of the

Pacific War was still far from certain

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in Europe by the end of January the

Western allies were moving towards

Northern Germany waiting for the big

push worried about the size of potential

casualties the Americans wanted

reinforcements to be fully prepared for

the

onslaught on the Eastern Front The Red

Army had made astonishing advances and

had reached the river Oda just 45 M from

Berlin but Stalin was also forced to

pause they faced ferocious German

resistance and their supply line was

stretched to the Limit they had no

choice but to wait for more

troops Stalin's Army was a fighting

force such as the world had never before

seen it was an extraordinary blend of

the

sophisticated and the

technological um with the

barbaric in front went punishment

battalions they were units composed of

people who committed either political or

disciplinary offenses and who were

simply thrown ruthlessly at the enemy as

cannon fodder either to clear minefields

or just to test the enemy fire and then

you got the guards divisions behind the

guards divisions were um mostly

formations such as Western armies might

just about recognize they had some um

pretty educated sophisticated people in

them and they were given the best of the

equipment and then behind them in turn

you had this great

math of more or less brutes mostly from

the um Soviet asan

Republic as the Soviet Army pushed

onwards they were fired up with Revenge

hatred and a lust to punish the

supporters of

Nazism rape was common place as they

entered the Hungarian Capital Budapest a

young Jewish girl was hiding in the

S when Liberation came it was the

Mongolians not the White Russian we

would expect it to

come they were rough and uncultured

using beautiful books for toilet paper

and heating fuel of course the first

thing they wanted were women the first

time it happened they burst into the

cellar where I was hiding with two

sisters while later discovered were

bonesses I will never forget the look on

the poor girls faces as the Russians

grab them and Mar them away to be raped

outside never

inside they were only 14 or 15 thank God

I only looked about 10 if that I must

have been too small and skinny after 3

weeks of liter

starvation though be still in many ways

they were specifically on the front line

to do the dirty

[Music]

work we have to face the fact that

the Western allies needed The Barbarians

the soldiers of Stalin in order to

defeat Hitler's tyranny that if we look

at this in the most brutal terms in the

course of the second world war American

and British ground troops killed about

200,000 Germans that's in the desert in

Italy and Northwest Europe the Soviets

killed about 3 and a half million so um

although yes one can take pride in the

fact that Western allies maintain their

civilized values they needed the Savages

in order to bring down

Hitler the West was worried about the

red Army's excesses but publicly news re

showed the Gratitude of local people

liberated by the advancing soldiers I'm

sure that Stalin would have been aware

of Churchill's concerns about the

treatment of people in the

occupied the territories being occupied

in the East but frankly there was

nothing Churchill could do about it the

British Ian Americans were still a long

way away in the west the Red Army was

advancing at extraordinary speed and in

the vular odor operation starting in

January

1945 uh they traversed hundreds of

kilometers um the the Germans were

pulling back very fast because of course

they realized that they were going to

have to defend Germany

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itself Stalin was determined that that

movement would be as fast and as deep as

possible he saw that the more territory

he conquered the stronger would be his

bargaining position at the next

conference that would have to be uh

arranged so he had a much more

acute

anticipation um of the political

consequences of the military campaign

than was the case of Roosevelt when one

looks at Roosevelt's foreign policy what

comes out is a desire to constrain

Germany to make Germany realize she'd

lost the war but not to make her so weak

that you have a vacuum of power in

Europe that the Soviet can just walk

over initially Russia's aspirations of

course was simply to survive but when it

became apparent that they were going to

win the war then the prospect of uh

overwhelming Germany and dominating

Eastern and Central Europe came to the

four

but towards the end of January the

Germans were still a formidable fighting

force and they constantly refused the

Allies demand for unconditional

surrender one of the reasons the Germans

resist so strongly both here and in the

East is because of the doctrine of

unconditional surrender which Rosevelt

has thrown on the table but if you're

fighting for your Homeland and the

Invaders at the gates you're going to

fight to the last they were fighting

with the fanaticism of Despair and

especially this was true of the very

young this was gal's Triumph that here

he had a whole generation of young

Germans who' spent 12 years

indoctrinated into Nazism into a belief

that the third right mattered more than

life itself and many Allied soldiers

have said that they found one of the

worst aspects of this last phase was

fighting the children a 13-year-old with

a rifle could kill you as dead as any

adult

German morale was boyed up by a belief

that new weapons would turn the tide of

the

war by early 45 the Germans can thump

V2s into antp and on the Rin Bridges and

places like that but everyone knows

they're never going to alter the outcome

of the war amazingly despite the Allied

strategic bombing which had been massive

and continuous and effective despite

that the Germans were still

manufacturing Secret Weaponry I mean

what secret Hitler always called his

secret weapons the first being of course

the V bombs and then these terrifying

rocket bombs uh which were being

produced long after the Normandy

Landings so even when the Allies were

ashore in Western Europe were on land in

Western Europe uh these things were

raining down on London and raining down

on antp and denying us of course a

port this bombardment by V1 and V2s had

seriously dented the morale of the

British people the first v1s were

launched in June

1944 one devastated the guards Chapel

near Buckingham Palace killing 121

[Music]

people the faster and more deadly V2s

started to rain down in September 1944

and into

1945 by the end of the war they had

killed over 2 and a half th000 londoners

Hitler secret weapons they had been

expected um throughout the war and then

they came and of course the government

was very Cy about revealing information

about what they were and denied the

effect of them and of course that is

always in public uh opinion terms and

morale terms that's always an absolute

disaster um and I think there was a

feeling of complete desperation because

they were pilot planes they seemed more

Sinister than the bombers um and I think

the deaths and the deaths from the b2s I

mean think like the Smithfield disaster

or the the ones the guards Chapel um

were quite devastating to people even if

the um statistics weren't NE necessarily

let

out we had a shelter in the basement but

if we ran to the shelter every time an

air raid sirum went off we'd never get

any work done so we'd stay where we were

on the fourth floor while the planes

came over and the bombs dropped and then

we'd be told best to run downstairs now

and so we'd go just in

time I remember the V1 and V2

Rockets I remember looking out of my

window and seeing Houston State go

[Music]

up a direct hit with a rocket thousands

of pieces of white paper fluttering up

in the

air other secret weapons were on their

way including long-distant submarines

which would enable them to go to the

coast of the United States without

surfacing without refueling so Churchill

knew and the people at the very top knew

this is not going to be a pushover

there's not going to be a sudden

surrender

at the end of January the Americans

continued to make progress in the

Pacific they were preparing for an

advance on manila the capital of the

Philippines but Japanese resistance was

strong so they realized defeating Japan

would be

costly they would need the formidable

Red Army to beat Japan after the break

we'll see how this ended up costing

Eastern Europe its freedom

[Music]

at the start of February 1945 the Allied

Powers were marshalling their forces for

the final assault on

Germany the Germans had fought back

fiercely but the outcome of the war was

by now in no doubt it was just a matter

of

time the red Army's final Advance on

Berlin had paused but further east it

continued to take over German territory

in East Prussia this land had had hardly

been touched by War its population lived

in relative Comfort this was in stark

contrast to the privations of the Red

Army and when they saw this their

soldiers looted raped and killed

civilians on a massive scale the

resulting flood of refugees is one of

the biggest single migrations

ever over 8 million people fled before

the advancing Red Army and many were

killed trying to get

away the German generals bravely held

open a corridor for their exit defying

Hitler's orders and risking execution

one of the most extraordinary took place

in East Prussia um near the Baltic um in

January February March 45 when in 4et of

snow and temperatures 25 below

zero the Soviets were smashing their way

into East Prussia driving more than a

million civilians before them men women

children with their carts and their

prams and their Barrows was struggling

through the Snows for

survival and as the Soviets swept into

East Prussia that finally there was only

one Escape Route left um across a frozen

Lagoon the fers half beside the Baltic

and tens of thousands of people were

struggling across this with Russian

shells falling smashing holes in the ice

and carts and screaming people falling

into it and scenes of terrible horror

and the German Army in those days fought

some very G actions to keep open that

last path into Germany uh for the

refugees from East

[Music]

Prussia by the beginning of 1945 it was

absolutely essential for the big three

to get together uh to deal with each

other not through diplomats but directly

Stalin as usual refused to travel abroad

and down in crisis M there were all the

old palaces of the

tars um he could show

off so Rosevelt and Churchill traveled

to the seaside town of Yola at previous

conferences they had agreed on the

establishment of the United Nations

German reparations to the Soviet Union

and the division of Germany but each

leader had a very different agenda and

each engaged in secret and separate

talks when they got to Yola

this tension in the the three-part

relationship is something that the three

leaders tried not to let show publicly

but were very aware of privately if

Great Britain goes down the Axis powers

will control the continents of Europe

and Asia and Africa and

australasia and the high seas I think

the basic question

is how did Churchill see Britain's role

now that the United States was playing a

major part in securing the Victory and

and when the Soviet Union was making the

largest contribution in terms of

Manpower he understood that he accepted

that he he fought every day to make sure

that the British didn't get short

changed in terms of what they were doing

certainly Roosevelt's developing the

idea that the USSR is perhaps not quite

as um friendly towards the rest as it

might be and this is curious because for

a good part of the war Roosevelt saw the

USSR as friendly or at least as someone

the us could work with and his

perception of the post-war world as not

precisely a condominium but as a world

in which the US and the USSR would have

some sort of overview now what this does

of course is deal out the United Kingdom

Churchill did not trust Stalin but he

didn't know that Roosevelt was also

maneuvering behind his back this double

dealing was most obvious in the case of

Poland the British had gone to war over

Poland which now lay in ruins the exiled

polish government wanted to return but

Churchill knew Stalin had designs on

their country so he wanted to walk away

from yter with agreement that the poles

would have free

elections yter agenda was dominated by

Poland where Stalin became as the

official record say very affable very

friendly there was a moment when both

Churchill and Roosevelt rather nervously

sort of asked Stalin you know free

elections in Poland yes said Stalin uh

and they thought well you know he can

agree to free elections but when will

they be so they said you know can we

have them within the year and St said

why not have them you know within six

months why not why wait so of course

Stalin was posing as being on the side

of the

Angels but in reality Roosevelt was

prepared to abandon Poland the three

leaders agreed that at some future date

Poland's borders would move west into

Germany

and Stalin would gain territory which

suited his political goals and for

Stalin security came through having uh a

territorial buffer between himself and

Germany and he found roserval and

Churchill were willing to Grant him this

now why did they make that decision in

early

1945 it looked as if an even more severe

War

would still have to be fought in the Far

East and the Western allies badly wanted

Stalin to agree once the war had been

won in Europe to turn his Red Army and

put it at the disposal of the alliance

against

Japan in the Pacific the Americans had

won an important Naval victory at ly and

by the 6th of February during the Ala

conference they had recaptured the

Philippines Capital

Manila but a new disturbing phenomenon

had emerged during these

battles suicide or kamikazi Pilots

attacked the American Fleet in large

numbers and inflicted heavy damage

[Music]

it was still not clear who would win in

the Pacific the atom bomb remained

untested and the Americans thought they

needed the help of the Red Army this was

to seal Poland's fate at

Yalta the problem for church at Yalta

was the American side but what Churchill

didn't know was that Roosevelt had

already been negotiating with Stalin on

all sorts of elements of the war against

Japan Roosevelt already had a secret

agreement with Stalin for American

planes bombing Japan to use Siberian air

bases and therefore Roosevelt did not

want to pick a quarrel over anything

certainly not over Poland about which

Roosevelt was actually quite cynical he

makes in the original Yola transcripts

Rosevelt makes very cynical remarks

about the polls and about the polls in

America and you know they have no

influence on on me and you know who

cares about them in other words he

didn't have the churchan or the British

commitment to the poles as a people in

their country Poland as a result Poland

became part of the Empire of the Soviet

Union under the heel of Stalin's tyranny

in recent years there's been a lot of

criticism of

yela um as a supposed

betrayal by the Western allies in

particular by roseld because he had the

power in the way that Churchill did not

the ball fact was the Soviets had got

there

first to put it bluntly unless the

Western allies were prepared to fight to

go to war with the Soviets to save

Eastern Europe which nobody was in 1945

from a moment um the fact was that

Stalin had got these countries

physically in his grasp when the exiled

polish government returned it was

greeted by Stalin's troops and arrested

free elections were quickly forgotten

Stalin's attitude was probably simple

Stalin said in Western Europe those who

liberated these countries have imposed

the systems of government that they saw

appropriate we think a different system

is appropriate we have liberated the

East we will decide what governments

governed in the

East however at Yola The Big Three

leaders did agree on how they would run

Germany the first thing was that there

should be zones of occupation in Germany

and here Churchill uh had a very strong

dispute with Roosevelt the Americans

didn't want the French to participate in

these zones of occupation and Churchill

insisted that they should and so as a

result of really quite a long fight as

it were behind the scenes at yter

between the British and Americans the

French got their their zone of

occupation the Allied Powers also agreed

at Yola how the United Nations should be

structured making the Soviet Union China

the United States and Britain the most

powerful members of it this is when the

structure of the United Nations was

agreed negotiations give and take came

up with an organization each of the

great Powers could live

with agreement on the long-term future

proved easier than on short-term

military

strategy while their troops showed

fraternal comradeship the leaders each

had their own eyes on

Berlin when Nazism was finally to die

on the 19th of February the Americans

started an offensive onto Japanese

territory and landed on the

strategically important island of

iima the Japanese immediately put them

under heavy

fire the Americans lost 4,000 men in the

first 2 days then for the next month

they Advanced slowly across the island

the Japanese were prepared to die in

their thousands and out of a total force

of 23,000 all but 216 died defending

what they saw as their sacred

[Music]

land in Europe the Germans were also

battling to the last they were fighting

local resistance movements Street by

Street the Allies had yet to advance

Into the Heart of Germany

itself in the minds of the West

allies like their Eastern Brethren

Berlin Hitler's Capital the heart of the

third right was always the symbolic

Target the Western allies in all their

plans and all their conversations always

talked as if Berlin was going to be

where they'd end up and when for example

representatives of the Dutch who were

suffering terribly under German

occupation were starving in

thousands and the Dutch begged that a

few division could be diverted to um

liberate Holland before uh going on to

into Germany and Allied commanders

always gave the same answer they said

the best service we can render to all

the oppressed peoples of Europe is to

get on to Berlin to um end the Nazi

tyranny and then everyone will be

free to make the Dutch people's lives

more desperate and miserable the Germans

flooded acres of land including fields

that could provide them with food the

Dutch daily food ration had fallen to

starvation

levels living in Rotterdam was Anna it

was bitterly cold and we were all

starving if we could find tulip bulbs

we'd roast them in an old dust

bin we had a bicycle with no tires my

older two sisters and my father would go

east of the city in Desperate search of

food we hoped the farmers just might

have

something but the nasty Germans would

stop them on the way back and confiscate

any food they'd found for

themselves the plight of the Dutch did

not go entirely ignored and food was

eventually parachuted in all over Europe

people were starving but the Western

allies refused to be diverted from

getting to Berlin and trying to keep

Poland as part of the West it meant that

if the Allies could reach Berlin and 100

miles beyond the allies and Poland would

be contiguous and therefore polish

Independence could be secured what

happened was that Stalin of course knew

this he knew the Allied plans we

communicated our plans to him and so he

came to a private arrangement with

Eisenhower which is most extraordinary

and we now have the whole correspondence

between Churchill and Eisenhower about

it

that Stalin said to Eisenhower Berlin is

no longer important all the German

Ministries have moved or are moving

south to leig Chets resident South so

why don't you move you advance your Army

South right and leave Berlin to us

because that's not important well the

moment Churchill learned of this which

he did by accident but by the accident

of seeing the armies going in a

different direction to what he'd

expected he said what is this I said no

no the the Soviets say Berlin's not

important and Churchill saw the Trap

immediately and Churchill said but wait

a minute you know even if all the

Ministries have left Berlin which I

don't believe because it wasn't true

still Berlin has a psychological

importance Berlin is the German Capital

Berlin is where Hitler is by now Hitler

had no faith in his military advisers

and as defeat was inevitable his

decision making became increasingly

irrational he wasted limited German

resources on developing secret

weapons addicted to painkillers and H up

in his bunker he became deeply

paranoid he's

demented uh he's obviously got terrific

phys physical problems his health is

broken and he's completely lost trust

completely lost trust in the general

staff in the Army he's acting as his own

military commander and he's become

fanatical for example he appoints himler

of all people uh as the commander of the

defenses of Berlin who's quite useless

he's a Nazi party functioning a

politician completely the wrong man but

he doesn't trust the Army and really by

this time Hitler knows the game's up and

he's determined to bring the German

people down with him the most

blameworthy were Germany's generals who

whatever their military genius and many

of them did possess military genius they

failed their nation and the world

because they were the only people who

both knew that Germany was losing the

war knew what the Nazis had done and had

the power to do something about

[Music]

it as the Allied Forces moov moved

through the ruins of Europe they faced

defeated and injured

Germans but many Red Army soldiers were

so brutalized that they showed little or

no mercy to their

[Music]

enemy the Germans often fared better at

the hands of the western

Invaders the vast majority of Western

Allied soldiers weren't natural

killers they felt miserably unhappy

about fighting among Villages and towns

that look pretty much like their own

Villages and towns and a story always

sticks in my mind of um a British tank

officer who as they were um advancing

into Germany on the ede of a forest he

saw movement and he saw vehicles moving

around and they swibble the turret and

fired several rounds of high explosive

and then put a couple of bursts of

machine gun fire there and then he said

to his horror he he saw through his

binoculars that the people on the edge

of the forest weren't German soldiers

they were

civilians and two small figures detached

themselves from the

wreckage

of the carts and the vehicles that they'

shot up and walked towards the thing and

one of them their children and they

stood and looked up at the turret of his

tank and a little boy about 10 says in

English to the British officer you have

just killed my

father and British officer wrote in his

diory there was nothing I could

[Music]

say one event more than any other

highlighted the ambiguous attitude the

British had towards German civilians the

bombing of

Dresden on the 13th of February 244 RAF

bombers dropped over 3,000 tons of bombs

on the city killing 35,000

civilians the Strategic value of the

Relentless bombing campaign of German

cities is the source of vehement

disagreement to this day among those who

think we shouldn't judge the past by the

standards of the present is John Hughes

Wilson one of the great controversies

that come out of the second world war is

the bombing of German cities we've

really rather agonized about this after

the war that's desperately unfair and

its revision is history of the worst

kind because you can't alter what things

were like at the time people's view I

think on the bombing of the saturation

bombing of Dresden was very mixed I mean

on the whole um I think there was not

the gung-ho attitude that there was in

the popular press the Daily Mail and the

Daily Express there wasn't that there

was a feeling I think well we've had it

why shouldn't they but I don't think

there was this sort of very strong

feeling of Revenge I think also there

was a degree of apathy I think people

were just so kind of exhausted about

their their ability and to be shocked um

had somewhat diminished by that

time other historians like Max Hastings

take the view that at the time it was

known that there was little strategic

value to this

bombing more bombs were dropped on

Germany in this last phase when the Nazi

defenses had more or less collapsed and

the Allied Air Forces had reached the

Zenith of their pa then in the whole of

the rest of the war put together and

when you say what did destroying Dresden

and um how leig all those other cities

contribute to the end of the war the

answer is virtually nothing Dresden is

the best known German city which was

carpet Bond it is now also known that it

was the one city that the Soviet Union

specifically asked to be attacked in

order to stop German troop movement the

Soviets knew that some 15 first class

German divisions were moving away from

Northern Italy from Central Europe from

Norway to go against the Russian Eastern

front and the Soviets were were

desperate to have dresen and lipick

pulverized so that this massive movement

of armor wouldn't take place the next

day United States Air Force Mustangs the

fighters come along and machine gun

survivors in the Parks you don't often

hear that but it's a fact as the United

States Air Force follow up so this isn't

just a British problem it's a problem of

the whole bombing

strategy why in 1945 did they go on

bombing cities the RAF go on bombing

cities

and I'm afraid the answer has to be

twofold one technological fanaticism had

sort of taken over that the fact that

you've got this huge bomber Force which

existed and you could hardly tell it to

do nothing um when the Germans were

still fighting furiously and the whole

thing had achieved a dynamic momentum of

its own and secondly because air Chief

Marshall St Arthur Harris the commander

Obama command had become completely

personally obsessed with complete the

destruction of Germany's cities before

the war

ended one of the most shameful things of

the second world war is the way that

Churchill who has launched this bombing

offensive and written warmly to Harris

to congratulate him on bombing out

German cities by the time March has come

around he actually retracts and writes a

really quite disgraceful memorandum to

the chiefs of the air staff saying I

don't think we should do this you know

and it's nothing to do with mov and has

to retract and he's doing that because

suddenly he realizes perhaps the airmen

have gone too far for public conscience

but the airmen have only done what the

Prime Minister requested and indeed

applauded them but Churchill was not

thinking much about bombing by that

stage in 1940 and 41 he devoted a huge

amount of energy and attention to

bombing because it was the only way of

attacking the Nazis but by 1944-45 his

mind was focused on what the land armies

were doing and the future of postwar

Europe in his Memoirs you SC mentions

bombing in the last volume or two there

are two distinctly different views on

the Allied bombing campaign of German

cities but everyone agrees that by 1945

the war had numbed people to its

Horrors what we're actually seeing here

is if you like the ratchet effect of War

what in 1939 would have been Unthinkable

by 1945 it's become a common place the

second world war shows the ratchet

effect of desensitization of human

feeling and human psychology and it's

the involvement of civilians that

ratchets up the casualties and makes the

point the second world war is a total

war in this program we'll see how in

March the Allied Forces face fanatical

Nazi

resistance and the Western allies

discover the horrors of the Nazi

regime in April the Americans finally

land on Japanese soil but at Great cost

to life on both

sides the Americans allow Stalin to take

Berlin as his prize and Britain starts

to realize they're out in the

[Music]

cold by March the Western allies were

fighting in Germany they had crushed

Hitler's last desperate attempt to alter

the the outcome of the war in Europe at

the Battle of the

Bulge winning had been very costly so

the Allies continued to push on but

cautiously everyone thinks that once the

Battle of the Bulge is over that there's

then a great lull well there isn't there

are two massive offenses going on uh

first of all in the South the Americans

are battering away and the British and

the Canadians are actually fighting in

Northern Germany taking really serious

casualties until they close up on the R

by March if you look at casualties that

are suffered by the Allies in that

period in that Winter fighting it's

actually quite bitter brutal

[Music]

fighting the Western Allied generals had

very different approaches to the final

assault on Germany and tensions ran

high Britain's Montgomery pressed hard

for a pointed sharp thrust towards

Berlin however Eisenhower the Supreme

Commander ordered a steady Advance into

Germany on a broad

front the British commander

Montgomery was strongly demanding that

the pace of the attack on the Germans

should be

raised Eisenhower refused Eisenhower

didn't want to waste American lives in a

race for

Berlin and here was Eisenhower

absolutely determined that although he

was going to push on into Germany he was

not going to have any more nasty

surprises he was going to do it very

slowly and carefully and he didn't

really see any advantage in pushing hard

and fast because the Allied zones of

occupation in Germany had already been

agreed so all they wanted to do was

complete the defeat of the Nazis at the

lowest possible

cost the Allies were closing in on both

sides the Red Army was busy bringing up

supplies and men for the final assault

on Berlin

itself on the 4th of March

they established a bridge head across

the river odor just to the east of the

city for the Western allies crossing the

r was to present a major problem

retreating Germans had hurriedly blown

up all the river's

Bridges but there was one still standing

at Ragan which the explosives had only

managed to weaken two weeks ahead of

schedule the Americans

crossed the last great offensive on on

the west is the attack across the Ry and

Montgomery in his rather slow and

careful way closes up and there's going

to be a big setpiece crossing of the Ry

first of all the Americans sees the

bridge at Remagen and Scuttle across it

quickly Hitler's Furious and orders the

four officers to be shot and he throws

everything against the bridge but that

by that time the Americans have

established a bridge head the Americans

premature crossing of the rine

infuriated Montgomery but Eisenhower

sent reinforcements to help secure the

bridge head in fact the weak Bridge only

held for a few days but it gave the news

reels something positive to

report further Upstream at Ragan the

Americans are over already across the

bridge that some Patriot of Hitler's

Germany forgot to blow

properly but though still a bridge its

girders are cut through its weaken still

work groans under impossible strains

after only a day or so the entire

structure falls into the Rind but its

job is done the Americans are over in

strength some 8,000 Americans managed to

cross the river before the bridge

[Applause]

collapsed the Nazis were prepared to

defend their Homeland to the last but

they were desperately short of men and

Firepower this situation was made worse

by Hitler's determination to fight on

two many fronts including the one in

Italy its former

Ally Sicily was invaded by the Western

allies in July

1943 soon after musolini was

deposed the new Italian government

surrendered just before the main Allied

invasion of Italy

started we assume when we entered Italy

at the time of the Italian surrender in

October 1943 that we would simply

Advance up Italy and suddenly we we read

Hitler's own orders saying that

that the Germans will put up a fight one

of the other forgotten fronts that the

Germans have to cope with and the Allies

cope with is Italy and someone called it

the tough old gut because Churchill had

said something like it's the soft

underbelly of Europe well it wasn't and

the Germans actually fought very hard in

a 600 day campaign nearly two years at

the end of the day it actually

ironically causes the Germans more harm

than the Allies because it gives the

Germans half a million casualties

so it's a diversion and if you like a

bleeding saw to

[Applause]

Hitler through March the preparations

for the crossing of the Rind continued

Churchill insisted on seeing the

operation personally despite concerns

over his

safety working as an engineer was

William

lowbridge I was in the front of the

assault in crossing the Rind it was our

job to bulldo the ramps down to the

river the Germans were firing heavily at

us there was a huge explosion at one

point I looked behind 24 men had been

hit by a shell that had landed yards

away crossing the Rind was a massive

operation involving nearly 60,000

Engineers the construction of hundreds

of pontoons and transporting tons of

supplies they even used smoke machines

to conceal troop movements from the

German

artillery the main Crossing began on the

24th of March led by the 15th Scottish

Division and followed by

120,000 American

troops at the same time a massive

operation to land paratroopers and

gliders Behind Enemy Lines commenced

these courageous men faced Fierce ground

fire and suffered serious losses

[Music]

typical Montgomery launches this huge

almost mini D-Day acrossing the rine

where it's very wide it's 500 yards wide

in some parts it's a th000 yards wide he

uses Marines and landing craft and smoke

and bombers and there's this tremendous

setpiece battle where he crosses the

rine and establishes thems on the

Eastern Bank of the rine and they are

like a dagger pointing Into the Heart of

the RAR and it's really the beginning of

the end for

Germany the German soldiers now out of

fuel and food were forced to beg for

supplies from local factories they were

an easy target for the Americans as

19-year-old Curtis whiteway

witnessed I pulled out my binoculars and

scan the field above us dead and dying

Germans were all over the field some

crying out in great pain others lay

motionless some of the Wounded started

to cry out the names of their loved ones

over and over then more cried out as

they were dying ever so

slowly it was eerie and ran chills up

one spine to have to sit there and

listen to the cries of so many

[Music]

men it went on for hours as dusk fell

then slowly one by one the men on the

field stopped calling out as they died

that night

[Music]

[Music]

now on the other side of the Rind the

Western allies did not rush for Belin

instead they moved forward cautiously

they did not want to throw away their

men's lives when the end was in sight

when you had this overwhelming

superiority of farath of artillery and

airpath it was a Perfectly Natural

feeling that if you're infantry soldiers

and you're marching along a road and you

come under Fire well there are two ways

of doing it either you can be a hero and

you can get up and throw yourself at the

enemy as a few people did and most of

them are killed or you can sit there in

the ditch by the road and call on the

radio for huge artillery bombardment or

air strikes which will probably Winkle

out the Germans uh in a few hours or a

few days and may well save your

[Music]

neck in in the Pacific the Americans had

made Headway against the Japanese but

they realized that there was going to be

no easy Victory the Americans are

closing in the Americans are closing in

in two different directions one in the

Central Pacific the US Navy is pushing

in heading for the Japanese islands and

then down in the South you've got

MacArthur sweeping up through the

Philippines and these two prongs are

pushing

in the island of iima was secured by the

26th of March

[Music]

the Japanese were also under attack in

Burma British and Indian troops had

turned up the pressure their strategic

aim was to open up a vital Supply Route

into China by mid-march they recaptured

the city of

Mandalay for some months now Japan had

been unable to defend itself from Air

raides the Americans had been bombing

their cities continuously then in

mid-march they switched to a much more

deadly low-level firebombing strategy

the United States Army Air Force

institutes a campaign to firebomb the

Japanese cities they are hugely

successful the only thing that stops

them going on is they actually run out

of fire

bombs on the night of the 9th of March

the Americans dropped 1,700 tons of

incendiary bombs some 16 square miles of

Tokyo were destroyed destroyed and over

100,000 people died in the fire

storm it was the most destructive

conventional raid of the war against

Japan the American public were very

aware of the firebombing of Tokyo and

the public reaction was largely very

positive it's really interesting to see

how American public attitudes towards

the use of of immense violence against

civilians altered during the war when

the war broke out Roosevelt's first

public intervention was to plead for all

sides not to descend to the barbarity of

attacking civilians by 1945 the massive

scale firebombing of of Japanese cities

was accepted by the American public huge

support and this was opinion poll 75 80%

of of the American public approved um

those kinds of of fire

bombings of course there wasn't

reporting in the American Media which

showed the cost of human life lives

there was very little in time or Life

Magazine which would give them uh an

impression of the way in which for

example Japanese people in Tokyo boiled

alive by jumping into canals and ponds

as the city was burning around them so

in that sense it was easier for

Americans to um applaud these kinds of

[Music]

tactics in the Pacific on the 1st of

April the American started their

invasion of the island of

okanawa the Japanese allowed them to

land on the beaches as the Americans

Advanced Inland only then did the

Japanese unleash a fanatical

attack at okanawa the Americans also

discover a horrible truth about dealing

with Japanese civilians not only is the

whole Japanese Garrison killed off

eventually not only do the Americans

have to get them out by what they call

blowtorch and cork sprw operations which

means basically put a flamethrower down

every trench and then throw a grenade in

to get the Japanese out when they

finally take the island the Japanese

civilians line up they have a fantastic

last bansai bayet charge and they have

to be dealt with uh the Japanese

generals commit mass suicide and the

Japanese civilians jump off the cliff

the fanaticism of Japanese resistance on

okanawa shocks the Americans it shocks

the American planners and it makes them

realize if they're going going to try

and take Japan proper it would be like

eating a

porcupine fighting in the Pacific and

Asia would continue for a further four

months in Europe the war was nearly over

but Allied soldiers uncovered the Nazi

concentration camps this was an even

greater shock to a World War weary of

[Music]

war in Germany advancing allies found a

demoralized and impoverished population

and an army that knew it was defeated

Hitler continued to mount desperate

counterattacks which made no military

sense but resulted in thousands of

deaths

and he ordered retreating forces to

destroy as much as they could blowing up

dams and burning

buildings Hitler in the last months of

the war made plain that it was a matter

of absolutely no interest to him at all

um who did all did not survive or what

of his own country did or did not

survive defeat um and indeed he seemed

to have

decided that if he could not have

victory that at the very least um he

would have a cataclysm worthy of the

Third Reich as he saw it it's as if the

Nazis in those last months there they

were clinging by their finger Nows to

the precipice and they knew that they

were going to fall in and they just

wanted to drag with them as much of

humanity as they could possibly

achieve once Over the Rind the Allies

attempted to take Germany's industrial

Heartland the

ru it is debatable if any real armaments

were still being produced

there what is certain is that the Allies

found themselves facing an enemy whose

morale was finally starting to

collapse they surrendered in large

numbers securing housing and feeding

these prisoners of War slowed the Allied

Advance even

further in the spring of 45 when the

Americans break through and encircle in

the ru Pocket modal's Army with its

400,000 men and there are many stories

told of German surrendering on mass when

the Great psychological collapse happens

in April 1945 surrendering to the allies

and saying uh now we've got your tanks

uh will you help us keep the Russians at

Bay the Germans were

terrified by the Red Army Advance

because it was known that the Germans

had behaved appallingly in the East and

they knew

that there would be shown no Mercy by

the Red Army troops who' lost

relatives in the fighting on the Eastern

Front The Red Army had to wait for

reinforcements for the final assault on

Berlin further south they had liberated

Hungary by the 4th of April and by the

13th after Fierce resistance they had

taken the Austrian Capital Vienna

as the Nazis retreated they forced

millions of prisoners to March back into

Germany rather than allow them to be

liberated by the advancing

allies the Western Allied prisoners had

been reasonably well treated during

captivity now they found themselves in

the same situation as those the Third

Reich deemed second class citizens poles

Russians Gypsies and other so-called

antisocial groups all were forced on

inFamous death marches to new camps

two weeks later we were on the move

again this time in cattle trucks

southwards to the satellite camps of

banal near lipik but not for long soon

we are being forced East we could hear

the Americans bombing after no food

water or sleep for 3 days we wildly

hallucinating it was at this moment four

of us decided to escape even though we

knew we'd be shot if the sniffer dogs

found us but it didn't matter leaving

ourselves to the fate of God We Lay

hidden in a ditch by the side of the

road miraculously the dogs missed

us many on these terrible marches were

civilians that had been taken from

occupied territories and forced to work

as slave labor for the Third Reich

one of the biggest problems for the Nazi

Empire in 1944 45 was it was desperately

short of manpa that every man capable of

bearing arms had been conscripted into

the vermar or the SS and sent to fight

and that left them desperately short of

people to um keep the factories going in

Germany to build the tanks the shells

the only way that they could keep the

factories going was by using slaves

conscripted labor

there were 7 and a half million or so um

laborers foreign laborers in Germany um

by the end of the uh the later stages of

the second world war they're extremely

badly

treated many of them died in terrible

circumstances particularly in places

like Camp Dora where the V2 rocket was

manufactured it is estimated that by the

end of the war the Germans held as many

as 10 million men women and children as

Prisoners the naris also killed at least

3 million Russian prisoners three minute

um in concentration camps slave labor

camps and by

1945 imprisonment had become the largest

single industry in the Reich the Nazis

were also holding millions of Jews

captive who they' planed to kill in the

gas chambers of the extermination

camps though aitz had been found by the

Red Army at the end of January its

Horrors hadn't been made public in the

west then then on the 15th of April the

Western allies entered

bson there had been certain certainly

some knowledge of rumors in the Press

about um the concentration camps um in

Germany what was happening to the Jews

but it was really the um the liberation

of bson which absolutely shocked I think

nothing had prepared anyone for the

horrors that there were there and they

were shown on newre I think on path news

um and PE and there was very much the

feeling that people must see these um

they had a a respon ability to see the

inhumanity of of mankind and of course

in a sense a justification of why they

had been fighting Germany you know they

were fighting evil and this was the

manifestation of

that I've been here 8 days this morning

we buried over 5,000 bodies we don't

know who they are behind me you can see

a pit which will contain another 5,000

I am the officer commanding the Regiment

of Royal

artillery guarding this Camp our most

unpleasant task has been making the SS

of which there are about 50 bu the dead

up to press we have buried about 177,000

people my name is G lorth and I live at

chesher I'm a present in b come doing

guard Duty over the

assessment the things in this Camp are

Beyond

describing when you actually see them

for yourself you know what you're

fighting for here pictures in the paper

cannot describe it at all the things I

have committed well nobody think they

were human at all

for some the impact of what they saw was

overwhelming of course there had always

been stories about Nazi atrocities but

bellson really brought it home bellson

was a terrible shock to absolutely

everybody another Camp buk andal

revealed more

atrocities and then on the 29th dhha was

liberated the press and politicians were

taken to these camps

it was widely

reported and even department stores put

up displays of what had been

uncovered Swan and Edgar department

store at Picadilly

circus they cleared their ground floor

and brought in the first photographs of

concentration camps when the photographs

were released in

1945 the newspapers and the radio urged

us that we should Brave it and go and

look at the pictures some were very

large some of them life-sized on the

wall

WS it was a shock of man's inhumanity to

man and everyone was hushed as they

walked around

[Music]

looking in the House of Commons

Churchill spoke for the nation saying no

words can express our

horror but the discovery of bson

galvanized the Allies to deal the final

blow to the heart of the Nazi

[Music]

regime by early April victory was now

certain the Red Army had amassed two and

a half million men at the river

Oda also within sight of of Berlin was

the US

Army by the 12th of April they had

crossed the river Elba near the town of

magur but then just a short distance

from Berlin the Americans

paused but then

suddenly as the Western Allied armies

close up to the Elbow Berlin sort of

Fades from the picture and suddenly

eisenhard sends this signal to Stalin

without consulting anybody to

Churchill's Fury saying there's no

intention on our part of going to Berlin

sty didn't believe him he couldn't

believe anyone would openly forego the

prize but eisenh har took the decision

which many of us think was the entirely

rational one that it had already been

agreed that Berlin would fall in the

middle of the Soviet zone of occupation

what was the point at that last gasp of

the war of getting tens of thousands of

American and British soldiers killed For

a symbolic Victory stopping at the elbow

was the most rational thing they could

have

done even before the Allies entered

Germany they had agreed how it would be

run once defeated it would be divided

into four zones which each Ally would

occupy and

govern it was agreed that the

demarcation line between the part of

Europe occupied by the Red Army and the

Soviet Union and by the Western allies

the British and Americans and French was

going to be the river Elba on that basis

there was no point the British and

Americans Racing for Berlin on the other

hand Stalin didn't trust the British and

Americans and he thought that they would

make a last minute rush for Berlin if he

didn't get there

[Music]

first the Allies had agreed Germany's

fate but there was no such agreement

about the rest of Europe the Red Army

fought relentlessly in the knowledge

that the countries they liberated would

be under their

control I think Stalin wanted to go as

far forward as possible he certainly for

example wanted to install a communist

government in Italy now whether that

would have required I mean had the

Soviets reached Italy clearly that would

have been as in the case of

czechslovakia Poland Romania Hungary

Albania you it would have meant a a

Soviet government so moving forward was

important for his political agenda and

he had his people as far as Italy was

concerned he already had his people

ready in Moscow to to go and form the

government Red Army advances were key to

Stalin's political objectives his

soldiers were motivated to fight hard

and little notice was taken of their

individual

sacrifices I was part of Red Army

liberating

forces we swept across laa border to

border a trigger I was wounded in the

right should soer but I just continue

fighting and moving onward unless you

were dead or your leg had been raped off

no one would send you home for sick

[Music]

leave the Western allies took nurenberg

on the 17th of April and were now deep

into Eastern Germany on the 19th leig

fell and then on the 23rd they took

Frankfurt

guring based with most of the military

staff at Hitler's Alpine retreat was

disgusted of the loss of

Frankfurt enraged he sent the fura a

telegram demanding his

resignation in response Hitler ordered

ging's

arrest but he was

ignored the final days for Hitler in

April 1945 must be Dreadful because his

world has come apart he's got this GED

armor on the Twilight the gods he's

bringing the German people down in

flames and right at the end his Nazi

party colleagues betray him totally

guring says my fura as you're trapped in

Berlin I will set up and run the Nazi

party from down

here Berlin was in Ruins there was no

electricity and no water but it was the

symbolic prize that Stalin wanted for

the Soviet Union he set two of his

generals on a race to take the city

Stalin was determined to to throw the

Red Army towards Berlin as fast as

possible and he had a a brilliant way of

doing this uh he took two of his

commanders aside zukov and KF and

without quite saying so in explicit

terms he let it be known that one of

them was going to be known as the Victor

and it was up to them to race to Berlin

to smash through the German uh defenses

and whoever Won

Won but zukov and KV had a particular

rivalry and what Stalin therefore did

was to essentially organize a

race what happened was that zukov got

stalled and it took him three days to

fight his way up onto this rather

difficult

obstacle his men struggled through sodn

ground covered in landmines they faced a

German army with Nothing Left to

Lose finally after 3 days they broke

through and then their artillery started

to batter the outskirts of

Berlin meanwhile KV uh his penetration

was much much more successful and he

stumbled across uh one of the first aut

bars a Motorway which goes straight up

uh into the south of

Berlin a city that was now defended by

old men and

boys one of the things the Germans do

towards the end Hitler does he brings

out what's called the um the Fulk storm

who are old men and young children these

are basically kids and old men who are

given an anti-tank bazooka and sent out

to hold the line against the advancing

hordes

[Music]

on the 21st of April zhukov's Army

started its final assault on Berlin the

two generals had masked nearly half a

million men against just 45,000 German

troops 40,000 old men and 3,000

children I think it's very hard for us

in the west to understand just how big

the Soviet offensive Wars 160 divisions

closing in on Berlin massive effort

300,000 Russians killed I think in the

fighting before Berlin these are

colossal casualties and give some idea

of the effort the Soviets put

in zukov and KV had shown themselves

through the the battles of the last two

years to be probably the most brilliant

commanders of large forces in the second

world war and yet in their burning imp

patience and rivalry to be the first

into Berlin goed by Stalin all the time

saying which of you is going to become

the hero of the Berlin battle um they

threw away their lives their men with a

recklessness that no Allied Commander

would have dreamed of

[Music]

in the last few terrible days of

fighting Germans were also sacrificed in

their tens of

thousands those not killed by the red

Army's Onslaught were executed by the SS

if they dared to hide from the fighting

to save their own

life and there's one very good story

told about a young lad who's in the

front line fighting for Berlin and his

house is just two blocks

[Music]

away so he leaves the front line just to

see his mom he's not deserting he's just

going to see her and go back

again and on the way one block away he's

stopped by a Nazi Party official or a

Gusto chap who says who are you doing

what are you doing and he's hanged on a

lamp post a block from his mother's

house as an example allegedly to all the

rest who might desert of course they

won't because they're fighting for their

lives with a sign around his neck saying

I'm a deserter

and that's one of the many tragic little

stories of Berlin and the young fighters

of Berlin in the last days many of whom

actually died in the

[Music]

rubble by the 27th of April the Red Army

had reached Alexander Platz the center

of Berlin they were just half a mile

from Hitler's bunker on vilhelm

straza the final pockets of German

resistance had to be flushed out but

after so much sacrifice the Ultimate

Prize Hitler's surrender would elude the

Red

[Music]

Army for four long years the eastern and

western Allied soldiers had fought the

Nazis finally the two Allied Forces met

face to face at TOA on the river

Elba on the 25th of April American and

Soviet Union Soldiers shook

hands then on the El river boats cross

and Men wave from opposite banks with

the meeting of Russians and Americans

Germany has been cut in half the end is

now very near indeed the end that all

cannot wait to

see I think it's very interesting the

reaction of the Americans and the

British when they first encountered the

Soviets coming from the East I think

they were surprised at the the

sophistication of the forward elements

of the Red Army there's a famous

quotation from one British soldier who

said that the ATT tank commander was

covered in Aerials and looked like a man

from Mars we also see film of the

Americans meeting the uh Russians at

toal on the elbow and the the Russians

are all carrying rather nice cameras

which have presumably been looted from

Germans but the Red Army by 1945 really

looks like a professional

[Music]

Army the Allied generals had ignored the

agreed zones of occupation in order to

beat Germany but now that the Nazis were

on their last legs political maneuvering

between the big three Allied Powers

began the American troops actually

Advanced very far into the areas which

were allocated to the Soviets the

Soviets got Berlin which was surely The

Greatest Prize but the American troops

Advanced right through the area

allocated to the Soviets so the dispute

between church and eisenh her and

between church and Roosevelt was don't

withdraw your troops now at least you've

got so far into Germany don't withdraw

your troops until we have a proper

arrangement with the Soviets and the the

Soviets said no no this is uh our area

leave it to us and so Eisenhower pulled

back his troops and Churchill was to put

it mildly very distressed he felt

Eisenhower doesn't understand the

political aspect and he uses that

argument with Eisenhower he's quite open

about it you don't understand the

political aspect and Stalin was

absolutely determined that the USSR

would come out of the second world war a

global power respected by the United

Kingdom and especially by the United

States of

America the only thing the church was

able to do and that was when we learned

that the Soviets were planning to enter

Denmark and to control the whole of the

Baltic and therefore Churchill ordered

Montgomery to go straight across north

of Berlin ignore Berlin go to the Baltic

Shore and cut the Soviets off from

Denmark

so that was one area where if you like

the British policy of minimizing the

Soviet advantage in the last months and

weeks of the war was

[Music]

effective in Italy the Nazis were

retreating with his protectors gone

musolini the fascist dictator was

flushed out by Italian Resistance forces

they they captured and shot him and his

mistress claraa Pachi on the 28th of

April their bodies were put on public

display in

Milan in Germany the Nazis were also

facing their last few days for uh a

minority of Germans who were committed

fanatical Nazis particularly in

organizations like the SS of course the

defeat was something they were very

reluctant to to accept and these are the

people who wanted to keep on fighting

and who were um very much inclined to

commit suicide if they did not uh if if

they once they realized that that it was

all up something between 10 and 20% of

all the senior Nazi leaders killed

themselves the regional leader leaders

the gitter Top members of the the SS so

large number of the top top echelons of

the most committed and fanatical Nazis

um saw absolutely no future and thought

that they were dying a kind of

sacrificial death for

Germany the second world war at least

tens of thousands many tens of thousands

perhaps hundreds of thousands we shall

never know for sure of Germans kill

themselves in their despair because they

believe that after the Third Reich there

would be nothing there would be just

emptiness there would be no future for

them at

all a teenage girl wrote in her diary

about the terrible price some women had

to pay in

defeat she was 17 and she described very

vividly service with the um Nazi Labor

Service and then how she and her sister

were caring in their apartment in Berlin

with their parents when the Red Army

burst into

and both the girls were repeatedly

raped and the girl wrote in aari and I

was still not yet

18 and

when the red soldiers left and the

family were left sobbing their mother

said to them your honor is gone you have

nothing left to live for you can only

die their own mother took these girls up

on the roof of their apartment building

and told them to

jump while their father stood on the

pavement underneath and implored them

not

to well in the end after 10 minutes the

girls burst into tears and ran back in

the building and

[Music]

survived Hitler's bunker was surrounded

but he refused to be taken alive

on the 29th of April Hitler wrote his

last will and

testament he then married his mistress

Eva

brwn and he then discovers just before

he commits suicide that um himla the

trle has actually set up quite illicit

peace talks with the swedes and Hitler

in his rage and his bunker right at the

end of the day realizes his old trusted

colleagues have betrayed

[Music]

him the next day at 3:30 p.m. Hitler

shot himself his mistress killed herself

with poison Hitler's body was then

incinerated by SS bodyguards the petrol

cans were found

later the Red Army had focused their

Firepower on the German Parliament it's

particularly interesting that they went

not for the chancell below which the

furus bunker was they actually went for

the Rog the old German Parliament

building now actually the the Rog had

been burnt gutted by fire in 1933 so it

was it was a ruin but on the front of

the r do it says in over the the

entrance it says de deutan vul to the

German people and I think that symbolism

may have been one reason why the

Russians made that the the target which

would would certify Victory because it

was their revenge against the Germans

also of course the Rog was a huge

building it was relatively isolated it's

surrounded by quite open um

terrain thousands of fanatical Nazis had

dug in around the

reichstag they wanted to die defending

the glory of

Germany the Red Army soldiers had to

fight each and every one to take this

last remaining symbol of the German

State then finally late in the evening

of the 30th of April two men climbed

into the remaining shell of what had

once been Germany's Parliament and

hoisted the red Victory Banner the film

shows the red flag the famous Victory

Banner being hoisted over the r dog now

the film is a reconstruction because

when the flag flag was actually hoisted

it was dark it was the night of the 30th

of

[Music]

April some friends and I went to the r

star our immediate reaction was to write

something like the Russian occupant

forces were here but we had nothing to

write with but I was proud of my country

and my Army we had managed to free so

many people from a

[Applause]

fascists Germany had been defeated

Europe was overrun countries and people

destroyed but the Allied Leaders soon

realized that a new battle for control

of Europe was about to

[Music]

begin in this program we see how in May

victory was

celebrated while behind the scenes

political tension was mounting between

the Allies by July A New World Order

emerges dominated by two not three

superpowers and we'll see how veiled

threats and broken promises in the

summer of 1945 shaped the political

future of Europe for the next 50

years at the beginning of 1945 the three

great Allied Powers the Soviet Union

America and Britain were engaged in the

last stages of the war in Europe even

though the war in the Pacific was far

from

over during February and March the

Soviet Union took Central and Eastern

Europe and the British and the Americans

took the north south and

west by early April Hitler was held up

in his bunker in Berlin but he ordered

his armies to fight on even though

defeat was

inevitable the Allies discovered

concentration camps in Poland and

Germany further proof If anyone needed

of the full horror of the Nazi

regime on the 30th of April Hitler

committed

suicide that evening the Soviet Union

took Berlin and victory in Europe was

imminent but for America any sense of

relief or expectation was overshadowed

by events at home earlier in the month

President Roosevelt who had led America

for three consecutive terms suddenly

died he was buried on April the

15th Leela arida was living in Brooklyn

at the

time we heard the news over the radio

everyone was in the street telling

friends and neighbors and hanging out of

the window saying did you

hear I went to tell my friend who lived

next door and then I told my Aunt who

began to

cry on the day of his funeral people

line the streets all the way from

Georgia some 1,000

miles Roosevelt was like a father figure

to us

[Music]

all the death of Roosevelt came as a

profound shock not only to the United

States but also to the United Kingdom

and the Soviet Union for the British

forces the American forces it was a blow

because Roosevelt had become the symbol

of of the American fighting Power and a

symbol which he had rather carefully

carefully sort of uh

nurtured the United Kingdom of course

felt that it lost an ally who understood

it and with whom it didn't always agree

but nevertheless was convinced of his

goodwi now in the United States of

course it was a traumatic transforming

experience not least because a wholly

unknown Man became president it is with

a heavy heart this man was Harry Truman

who was virtually unknown on the

international diplomatic scene poor old

Harry Truman stepping into FDR's shoes

the shadow of FDR fell over Truman's

presidency in a way that Truman himself

was was was acutely aware of there was a

a scrum of reporters outside and Truman

said nice to see you boys he knew all

the the Capitol Hill reporters and he

said I don't know if you fellas have

ever had a a load of hay fall on you but

yesterday when I heard the news the moon

the planets and all the stars fell on me

and it was an amazing kind

of revelation of his of the way he he he

really thought he was terrified I think

and completely aware of his of his own

lack of preparedness for the role that

had been thrust upon Him Truman was a

farm boy from Missouri he' had no

education Beyond high school he was a

plain spoken ordinary man who made much

of his ordinariness even in the short

time that he'd been vice

president roseld hadn't taken him into

his confidence roseld hadn't told him

about any plans he might have for how to

deal with Stalin and Churchill so he was

on a very very fast learning curve when

he came into office that America will

continue the fight for freedom in his

first public speech Truman promised to

continue America's war effort demanding

nothing less than unconditional

surrender from Germany and Japan our

demand has been and it remains

unconditional surrender

[Applause]

in Europe at least surrender was not far

away on the first day of May the Red

Army under General zukov took Berlin the

Allies were now in control of Europe but

still faced

resistance all the German soldiers had

given up

fighting on our way into the marketplace

we ran into senior German officers

taking of Insignia that would identify

them they asked if the British had

arrived finally we saw the town's

civilian authorities surrendered the key

to the British I was expecting the

British to look like the British Devils

of the propaganda

portrayals but instead they look just

like

us the second world war in Europe did

not end cold one day with suddenly all

the guns falling silent it sort of

trickled and faltered to a stop like an

oldfashioned gramophone running down the

Germans were

terrified by the Red Army Advance

because it was known that the Germans

had behaved appallingly in the East even

worse than they had in the west and they

knew that there would be shown No Mercy

by the Red Army troops who' lost

relatives in the fighting on the Eastern

Front a lot of German soldiers

especially the SS people felt that there

was nothing to gain from giving up they

might just as well fight on and I've met

red soldiers who told me about being in

battles well into May second third week

of May 45 where they just encountered

groups of Germans who were still

shooting because what was the point of

being taken prisoner if you thought you

going to die in those last days of the

Third Reich hysteria and despair

prevailed generals killed themselves in

their

hundreds officials kill themselves in

their

thousands and ordinary civilians in

their tens and hundreds of

thousands Hitler himself Gobles his wife

and their children killed themselves

himler committed suicide when he was

captured guring later on after he'd

stood trial and was uh faced with with

execution by hanging which he thought

was

unmilitary there's a a letter written by

um um gbl's wife to cbles just before

she and her husband killed their six

children and then killed themselves in

the bunker right at the end of the war

where she says um uh I'm going to do my

uh children a service because life will

be completely pointless and will not be

worth living without national socialism

um so we're all going to

die with no hope left finally on the 2nd

of May the Germans sent envoys to meet

Montgomery to agree terms for

peace 2 Days Later came unconditional

Sur

render but at the very moment of Victory

the Allies were arguing among themselves

in a foraste of far greater trouble to

come kitle from Hitler's headquarters um

signed a surrender document at

Eisenhower's headquarters at Reams on

May the 7th but then the Soviets were

enraged that they hadn't had senior

people at it and insisted the whole

thing was redone a day later in Berlin

with their proper delegation and

commissars present and you pay your

takes your choice which could be

considered the real German surrender

hostilities will end officially at 1

minute after midnight tonight Tuesday

the 8th of May the German war is

therefore at an end people greeted the

news with a mixture of joy and relief

that the nightmare was finally

over at the end of the war my mother

showed my sister and me a packet of

cyanide she had got from the Family

Pharmacy in Zagreb and was determined to

administer to us should the Nazis have

invaded

[Music]

England she was not going to have others

decide where and when we should

die I asked whether she would now

destroy it she said no and having shown

us the packet of white powder returned

it to the rear of the Shelf in Father's

wardrobe

in Moscow the Soviet Union celebrated

the extraordinary success of Stalin's

Red Army and the Soviet

[Applause]

people the Soviet Union had enormous

reason to feel incredibly proud of

itself it had not only liberated all of

the territory of the Soviet Union as it

had been before 1941 it had also moved

into Eastern and indeed deep into

Central Europe and uh was across more

than half of Germany it had captured the

German Capital uh it was the strongest

land power in the world it was one of

the three strongest air powers Stalin

was determined to celebrate properly the

victory in the war with a great military

parade across Red Square so there he was

standing on the top of the melum zukoff

coming across Red Square on the white

Arab stallion announcing to Stalin that

Victory had been achieved and then the

parade of all the regiments with their

spoils the banners of the verar which

they threw at his feet to signal that

Germany had been

unconditionally defeated by the might of

the Red

Army in London and across Europe

Britain's also

celebrated as the hour of 300 p.m. Drew

near for church your speech

groups of people both indoors and out

gathered around any available Wireless

set suddenly everyone became

quiet today is Victory in Europe day and

I remember looking around and catching

the eyes of one or two people and it

seemed as if the same expression of

thankfulness and pleasure could be read

in

each what happened on V day was really

basically everybody took the day off it

was a public holay for most people you

know they dressed up they there was a

tremendous desire to come to London to

be in the capital to be where it was at

to sort of throng down the m to

celebrate outside bakan

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

Palace and Bunting in the street and

flags and you know drinking and dancing

and doing the

coner some interesting stories about

older evacuees who were determined to

get on a train and make sure that they

were in London for the C

[Applause]

celebration but for Churchill victory

was just a brief reprieve from new

anxieties Stalin now occupied vast SES

of Eastern Europe and there was no

indication that he planned to leave at V

Day in the 8th of May when everybody was

celebrating and he appeared before the

crowds in whiteall he made his great

speeches London the great hippopotamus

the great rhinoceros which had survived

all these bombardments his prime

minister's box was filling up with all

the problems relating to the Soviets in

Yugoslavia in

Poland It cast a very grave Shadow over

his celebration of the

victory victory signaled the beginning

of a new battle between the superpowers

for ultimate control of Europe peace

would be almost as traumatic as the war

itself on the 8th of May the Nazis had

surrendered to the Allies but this also

marked the moment when the Allied

wartime Coalition began to crumble

Europe was now divided between the Red

Army in the East and the American and

British armies in the West West Behind

these lines the countries liberated from

the Nazis were now controlled by new

occupying forces who would determine

their

fate there was a great degree of

disagreement between the so-called big

three the Soviet Union Great Britain and

the United States of America as to the

future of those States that had been

under German occupation in Eastern

Europe and the Soviet Union was adamant

that these states um were either

liberated or going to be liberated by

the Red Army and so they would have to

have a great degree of say as to the

Future governments and political systems

in these countries the Soviet Union was

determined that they have a cordone

sanitar that there be buffer States

between it and the Western Powers the

United Kingdom worried about this

because for centuries for a thousand

years the main foreign policy of the

United Kingdom is not to have a single

great power on the European continent

and here was the fear that in fact

Germany had tried through two world wars

she'd been defeated and here comes the

Soviet Union essentially a continent

itself now threatening to be this

dominant power in Great Britain and

espec especially Winston Churchill uh

there was a feeling that democracy had

to be the trademark democracy had to be

the main stay of all these political

systems so there was a great degree of

aggravation about the prospect of

numbers of Eastern European countries

being dominated by the Soviet

Union the principle of democracy for all

had been EST established at a peace

conference in Yola in February Stalin

Churchill and Roosevelt had agreed that

all nations previously under German

control would have democratic

governments and free

[Music]

elections but by miday it became clear

that for many countries in Eastern

Europe this was not going to

happen as the Soviet Union replaced the

Germans they brought their own political

system imposed through Stalin's secret

police the

nkvd with the Red Army came the nkvd

came Soviet governmental officials came

party representatives and Stalin made

sure that Soviet control was tight in

all of the countries of Eastern

Europe Stalin wanted to

anesthetize any possible

threat uh from anti-communist groups in

the countries that the Red Army had

liberated from

Nazism the police forces sent in by

Stalin from the USSR rounded up known

Nazi sympathizers rounded up members of

the middle and upper classes

is um moved in on all of the elites who

were judged to be hostile to Communism

so that the prisons started bulging

everything that had been constructed at

Yola which was based on why Britain had

gone to War and why Britain and America

had defeated Nazism was to produce a

better world and here we are there's

Victory there's still celebration going

on in the street streets and Churchill

knows that everything is going

sour that behind this Iron Curtain

things are going on which I think church

WIll uses the phrase this isn't the war

the this isn't the world we fought for

what the Americans thought of Churchill

was that he was he was being overc

concerned he um um didn't really

understand that the new world was going

to be different and so the tensions

between the British and the Americans

were there because they had different

views of the threat of the Soviet Union

and different views of what might happen

to

Europe Britain had gone to war over

Poland so Churchill was particularly

concerned for its future Stalin had

agreed to hold free elections there but

had now installed his own government and

arrested the main opposition

leaders I had fought in the Polish

resistance in Warsaw until it fell to

the judgments and and we were sent to

aitz when the Americans finally freed us

the big question was do we go back to

Poland already we had got word that it

was starting all over again that the

Russians had sent resistance fighters to

Siberia one day I received a letter from

my mother saying don't come back so we

decided to join the Polish Army in

Italy Poland was absolutely crucial to

the buffer zone that Stalin wanted to

create in Eastern Europe because so much

trouble had come to Russia from Poland

in centuries past and indeed in the 20th

century so it was crucial for Stalin to

assert that the Soviet Union had a

special interest in having um a

comfortable relationship with the new

polish government and that basically

meant um a government in Poland of which

Stalin himself personally uh approved

the war ended on on the 8th of May and

church was astonished 4 days later on

the 12th of May to learn that the

Americans were already planning to

withdraw and about to withdraw troops

from Europe but the withdrawal of these

troops really sent a signal to Stalin

that the United States was not going to

be in a position to insist on the

fulfillment of any of the Soviet pledges

and it came just as the fate of the

Polish negotiators who were meant to be

the Future Leaders of of an independent

polish government uh was announced

they'd been seized by the Soviets

outside War taken to Moscow put in the

lubianka prison and had been charged and

found guilty of all sorts of spous

Soviet charges but these were the people

who Stalin had agreed at Yola were to be

an integral part of a new broad-based

all party uh polish government it's a

terrible moment that for Churchill the

sense that after everything Britain had

endured Poland had fallen into the

Soviet Mo and unspeakable misery and

Britain which had gone into the into the

war still as one of the Richer and

greatest Nations on Earth had fallen

from the first rank of

powers but while on the international

scene the Soviet Union was displacing

Britain for the people of both countries

day-to-day life in peacetime was as

harsh as it had been in

war the Soviet Union was a country in

[Music]

Ruins devastated by the enormous effort

it took to win the

war the cost of the war for the Soviet

Union and its impact is

unimaginable the best estimate is that a

total of 27 million people died as a

more or less direct result of

hostilities including about 8 million

actual battle

dead and one of the most striking images

which is recorded in in Soviet writers

of the time is gangs of Orphan children

roaming the streets uh begging because

all the adults had been killed Stalin

was a very worried man at the very

moment of victory over Germany because

he knew what a dreadful condition the

USSR was

in uh the destroyed

economy the ruined Administration the

huge responsibilities of

reconstruction Stalin knew he was going

to have to use brute force to get his

people to rebuild their country his

troops had seen even in the depredations

of War a better life in the west and

were returning home full of Hope and

expectation but to face

nothing they had seen a much more

orderly Society they had seen shops and

churches open they had

seen uh a standard of living in some of

these countries that

they had previously thought unimaginable

able in the world Stalin was going to

arrest anyone who called for a

relaxation of the regime among the

civilian population and he was going to

Astound Soviet people with his

ingratitude for what they had done for

him his regime in the war he was going

to clamp down as never

before Stalin began to round up

returning soldiers suspected of being

potential dissidents or anyone else who

might be an

anti-communist in public relations

between the big three looked cordial but

behind the scenes a diplomatic war was

raging Churchill was losing his fight

against a Europe dominated by the Soviet

Union The Fallout would have a

devastating impact for decades to come

[Music]

[Music]

by June 1945 Europe was under Allied

occupation in Poland and much of the

East Stalin's secret police were purging

anti-communist

factions this was an open violation of

the Allies agreement for a free and

Democratic

Europe but there were other diplomatic

wrangles to resolve the future of

Germany had long been the source of

vehement

[Music]

disagreement there were various plans

throughout 1944 and in early 1945 as to

what would happen to Germany at the end

of the war there was an idea in 1944 the

morgant toow plan that Germany

essentially be reduced to a sheep

pasture pastoralization of Germany it

was called the Allies couldn't really

agree they just couldn't agree uh Stalin

wanted a neutral Germany uh the Western

powers of course did not want to see a

neutralized Germany completely

completely but nonetheless they didn't

want to see a resurge in Germany and if

you're not going to reduce it to

nothingness how are you going to control

it and who gets to control it and so

it's decided it's going to be broken up

into zones so each of the Allies plus

France have their own

Zone on the 3rd of July the Allied

Forces moved into their assigned

zones the French got a very small part

of uh Germany and basically in the

southwest the part that was closest to

France itself the Americans took over

South and much Central Germany the

British occupied the north with the

exception of the of of Breman because

the Americans wanted a a sea port

leading into the North Sea and then the

the Russians the Soviet Union took over

the East which later of course became

the German Democratic Republic and the

line drawn um more or less vertically

down some way uh across the middle of

Germany and then Berlin was itself

divided again in four

[Music]

sectors the occupying Allied Forces

faced an immediate

problem there were millions of displaced

people on the move across Europe many of

them trying to find their way home or to

a place of Refuge

I had been taken away by the Nazis to

Austria as a slave after the war I

wanted to get home I asked a Russian

officer for help but we were only taken

as far as Hungary then I discovered we

were going to be sent to Japan to fight

for Stalin that was it I was never going

to fight for Stalin and started looking

for a fellow

deserter it felt like months to walk

back to Austria our desired destination

where there were about half million

political refugees like me with nowhere

to go here I found a British catering

Corp Transit camp at my first breakfast

they asked me what they'd like I could

have anything eggs or whatever but I

wanted

bread it was the first time I tasted

bread since my mother had made me some

in

1942 the Nazis had drafted in well over

seven million forced laborers to help

with War Industries and many other

things so you had in addition to the

German population the slave laborers are

trying to get home displaced persons

slave laborers often became reclassified

as displaced persons uh and then German

refugees from from the East all Milling

around mostly in the Allied sectors

they're not exclusively so creating

further problems of supplying and

keeping things

going amongst the millions of displaced

people were Jewish survivors For Whom

the horrors of the Holocaust redoubled

their desire for their own

Homeland a few hundred, Jews had

survived in Europe during the war most

of those Jews were living in what had

been the concentration camps of course

they were no longer prisoners they could

walk out but they had nowhere to go they

were generally housed in the barracks of

their former guards

most of them remained there hoping that

they could qualify for immigration and

many of them demanded admission to

Palestine they would join thousands of

Jewish people who had officially

immigrated to Palestine before the

war we were very glad the war was over

but there was also the shadow of finding

out who had lived and who had died back

in

Europe my mother never knew where her

own mother had disappeared we found out

later she had died on a train on her way

to a death

cam the big thing in my life was the

secret Zionist Army the Hagar everyone I

knew was in it but it was very hush hush

my main job was to guard H's Jewish

quarter against Arab

attacks I also did nursing for the

British camp where European Jews who had

arrived here IL legally were being

detained it was good for them to be able

to talk to someone who was already

living here in what one day would be

Israel in 1945 Palestine was under

British control as part of its Empire in

the Middle East during World War I the

British had made promises to everybody

they had promised the Jews in the Baler

Declaration of

1917 that they would facilitate the

establishment of a Jewish National home

in Palestine with certain

provisos they had promised the Arab

nationalists

the creation of a great Arab State the

British found themselves saddled with

responsibility for what was called by

many people a twice promised land and it

was argued by both sides that promises

had been made and Promises had been

betrayed in Palestine itself about 30%

of the population at this time was

Jewish and about 70% was Arab the

zionists hoped to create a majority in

Palestine by bringing about a large wave

of immigration both of displaced persons

and of other Jews who had survived in

Europe but the Arab nationalists of

course were dead set against the idea

that they should be turned into a

minority in their own country and so

they strongly resisted the idea that

there should be any immigration

whatsoever when the war ended the pent

up fr frustrations both among the

zionists and among the Arab nationalists

in Palestine boiled

over this frustration LED Zionist

militants to escalate their attacks

against British

troops in 1947 the British decided to

pull out and handed over responsibility

for Palestine to the newly established

United

Nations I have been instructed by his

Majesty's government that they have

consequently decided they must plan for

an early withdrawal of British forces

and of the British Administration from

Palestine in 1948 Palestine was forcibly

partitioned with the larger part of the

country becoming the new state of Israel

still a source of grievance and conflict

today this is just one Legacy of the

great political upheaval which took

place in the immediate after math of the

war the pattern in Southeastern Europe

was not much different from the pattern

in other parts parts of Europe and in a

sort of political vacuum rival

organizations wear at each other's

throats to try and achieve some kind of

political political Supremacy in

Yugoslavia the situation was less

favorable for the Soviet Union because

here you had a nationalist communist

resistance organization which had grown

into a massive political force and by

the end of the war with the retreat of

the German occupying forces this was the

force that really captured and created

the state of Yugoslavia but it was not

necessarily a force which was simply

going to be subservient to the Soviet

Union in the Baltic states there was uh

Guerilla resistance to the Soviet

reoccupation which continued throughout

the late 40s and 50s in the Ukraine also

there was a great deal of partisan

resistance to the Soviet reoccupation

they were not welcomed as liberators by

any means in the western Soviet Union

and the nkvd the interior Ministry

forces waged a long and hard campaign

against uh partisans in these areas uh

long after the the fighting finished in

Southern and Eastern Europe dramatic

regime changes were underway people

found themselves living under yet

another repressive regime sowing the

seeds of conflict that would resurface

decades later the issue of who would

control Europe would have to be resolved

between the big 3 after the break we'll

see how President Truman was to

dramatically change the relationship

between America and its wartime

allies by July 1945 a defeated Germany

was divided into Allied zones of

occupation the east of Europe was under

the control of the Soviet Union and the

West under the British and

Americans there were signs of political

struggle and unrest through throughout

Europe the dominance of the Soviet Union

worried Churchill but he also had

pressing matters to deal with back

home in July the wartime coalition

government under his leadership was

dissolved Britain returned to Party

politics for the first time in 10 years

there was to be a general

election I think the main thing about

the mood of the country at that time was

a desire for change such as had not

existed since 1918 people felt very

strongly that they hadn't gone out and

fought and died in order to go back to

the same unfair society that they'd

known in the 30s that they wanted

something new and better and Freer and

fresher and fairer an awful lot of the

British

people felt that they'd had enough of

government by perceived toughs they felt

the toughs had got them into this

mess and they'd had enough of it all and

they were set upon a more equal and just

Society um which was going to be run by

people who did not look and sound like

the people who got them into the

frightful mess in 1939 there was a

desire a quite I think a quite complex

feeling about what was wanted from this

postwar world and in a sense there was

very much the feeling that there had got

to be a better Britain on the one hand

you had a desire for um return to

normality on the other hand that

normality somehow had to be

better labor fought the 1945 election

essentially on the basis of the beverage

report which had advocated a system of

national insurance a system of ensuring

that everybody was educated that

everybody that nobody starved in the

streets that there was uh a a safety net

Beyond which nobody was to be allowed to

fall the election was held on the 5th of

July

1945 over 70% of the population

voted including British servicemen and

women all over the world but it would

take 3 weeks to collect and Count Their

ballots Churchill and Atley would have

to wait to find out who would lead

postwar

Britain but International politics

continued

regardless in mid July the big three

were to meet at potown in Germany to

decide the future of Europe

Churchill as a precaution took the

leader to took Clement Atley the leader

of the labor party to pots down with him

just in case the uh the worst happened

and Labour won the

election this was the first time all

three Allied leaders had been on German

soil since the War Began and Churchill

and Truman took the opportunity to tour

Berlin before the potan

meeting Churchill had seen on a fairly

regular basis film taken by AF Plains of

the bombing of German cities but that

was taken from 8,000 ft or 10,000 ft but

like everybody he hadn't seen it from

the

[Music]

ground suddenly to come to the city and

in fact go around with Truman uh they

traveled around together neither man had

seen it and he was very shocked both by

the devastation

and also by the

refugees he was astounded by the

desperate situation of the berliners who

had

nothing the berliners could be seen

scurrying amongst the rubble with their

pathetic bundles they looked and acted

like rats by disappearing into the

man-made holes leading to basements of

large department

stores a few I saw who came out of

hiding were pasty looking and iated and

looked so very much older than they were

these people Hitler had declared with

the master race If Only They knew what

their Destiny held for

them on the agenda for discussion with

the future of Germany including the

amount of War reparations they would pay

and the future of Poland and liberated

Europe each of the Allied Leaders wanted

a very different result so negotiations

were tense

potam itself as a conference was not a

peace conference which included for

example representatives of the defeated

German Nation or the defeated Italian

Nation it really was a conference

between the big three again the USA the

USSR and Great Britain to try and thrash

out their relationship in the future

Churchill went to potan with two

separate objectives one was to have one

last attempt to persuade Stalin to

restore because they'd now been

subverted restore freedoms to Poland the

country with which Britain had gone to

war but as he had never met Truman

before his second objective was to

really have a conference similar to the

ones he used to have with Roosevelt to

settle the outstanding issues in

anglo-american relationships Truman as

far as one can tell had a slightly

suspicious view of the United Kingdom

which indeed was common with much of his

part of the country which is more or

less the middle South one might say the

northern part of the South which did

didn't have any basic links with the

United Kingdom and saw Great

Britain as a competitor rather than a

natural Hands Across The Sea

Ally the Americans primary objective was

to assert their power over the Soviet

Union now when Truman became president

he'd had no preparation particularly in

foreign policy and of course he turned

to Roosevelt's advisers and they decided

with the new president this was the

opportunity to bring as it were some

realism into foreign policym these

advisers came up with the idea of quidd

proquo that is to say that if Stalin

wanted something he had to give

something because they had the

perception that the United States was

surrendering points or territory to

Stalin and not receiving anything in

return Stalin at Potsdam wanted Soviet

interests to be protected in Eastern

Europe he wanted Poland to be moved

westwards and the USSR to take up the

space vacated he wanted

reparations uh from the Germans in

payment for the damage that they'd done

in the uh USSR and he wanted the Western

allies to confirm all of

this Truman felt he could take a tough

line with Stalin because he had a new

secret weapon

on July the 16th the atom bomb had been

successfully tested in Los Alamos New

Mexico Truman believed the bomb would

help both to defeat Japan and to assert

control over the Soviet

Union Truman very

clearly assumed that the possession of

the bomb would be an incredible Ace in

the whole form him that if worse came to

worse he could act announc this and the

Soviets would be strike back in awe and

and wonder in shock and awe one might

say at the weapon the United States now

possessed and when Truman said cunningly

to Stalin that he had a little secret he

wanted to share with Stalin a little

secret that might stand

Stalin Stalin of course knew what the

secret was already from his intelligence

agents he knew that he couldn't trust

the United Kingdom all the USA because

he had an understanding that this is how

great Powers operated against each other

he thought that economic rivalries would

produce political and Military tensions

in the post-war world and he thought

that eventually there would be a third

world war of course what Truman didn't

know was that Stalin already knew the

United States had the bomb and therefore

it didn't come as such a profound

surprise what the bomb did for Truman

was give him massive

self-confidence in this debut on the

world stage the Americans had the

profound the overwhelming

weapon and the Soviets

didn't this was the dawn of the atomic

age possession of the bomb was to

dominate World politics for the next 60

years in July Stalin was already

secretly developing his own bomb but

until he was ready he had little

leverage on issues like reparations all

he could do was remind the allies of the

great sacrifice the Soviet people had

made to win the

war but Truman saw no value in a Germany

weakened further by excessive

reparations and demanded a reduction in

the Soviet Union's

share in return Stalin insisted on a

newly expanded Poland governed by

leaders under his

control the two great Powers struck a

deal and Churchill who had fought for

Poland's Freedom won little but an empty

promise of free

elections mid conference Churchill and

Atley went home for the results of their

election it's a curious situation that a

British general election took place

after the defeat of Germany but whilst

the Allies were still fighting against

Japan what was even more Curious

probably to both Stalin and uh Truman by

that time was that Churchill was

defeated

even Clement Arley himself thought the

best result he could hope for would be a

hung Parliament and in and in the end he

got a huge majority the labor part's

great Victory shows that the country is

ready for a new policy to face New World

conditions it was inconceivable to the

Soviets of course who pointed out they

would have made

certain uh that the outcome of the

election would have been as they wished

um I don't think that Truman and the

Americans took quite the same approach

but everyone was stunned I think when

Churchill was defeated the story is that

somebody brang Churchill and said and

said well uh there it could be a

blessing in disguise and church was very

well disguised his um public response

was this was very fair the people had

had it very hard I it wasn't surprising

they wanted to change um I think um

personally he obviously felt

very I think bitter is probably too

strong a word but he obviously felt very

disappointed he felt that he had run the

way the race and then he had been as it

were rejected at the winning post

Clement Atley Britain's new prime

minister returned to the Potsdam

Conference alone to discover that

Britain had little influence over the

proceedings Atley just fluted naturally

into this in Churchill's place and did

more or less the same things that that

Churchill would have done so it wasn't a

question of actually abandoning

Churchill strong positions he he

maintained them but failed in all of

them because Stalin and

Truman wouldn't wouldn't defer to the

British point of view although of course

it was politely known as The Big Three

at Le Truman and Stalin actually it was

really the big two and a quarter wasn't

it and it was at Potsdam they started to

realize it Britain was not a great voice

in the world any longer the world was

already beginning to be dominated by two

super Powers the Soviet Union and the

United States potam left many issues

about the political future of Europe

unresolved but it was clear that this

was the beginning of the end of any

cooperation between the

Allies within 3 months of the end of the

war in Europe a new war had started the

Cold War a struggle between the two

newly established superpowers with very

different ideologies but a shared

ambition of world domination

in this program we see how in August the

Ultimate Weapon of mass destruction was

used for the first

time in September the European powers

reclaimed their colonies but still faced

conflict with Independence movements

throughout southeast

Asia at the dawn of the nuclear age

America's Empire expands as Britain's

falls into decline

by the start of August 1945 it was clear

that Japan was facing

defeat but it continued to fight on even

though its German Ally had been forced

to accept unconditional

surrender the war in the Pacific had

started for very different reasons from

the war in Europe

Germany goes to war because Hitler's got

a blueprint for German expansion and to

make a German Empire to the east the

Japanese on the other hand have perhaps

a different reason for going to war the

Japanese have no natural resources and

so when the Japanese attack they're

going there to seize key economic raw

materials so at the end of the 1930s

Japan had needed to conquer its

neighbors to ensure the growth of its

industry and to do this it needed to

expand its Army

understandably other Colonial Powers

hadn't liked this challenge to their

established claims on these

territories the Pacific was America's

sphere of influence and they were

determined that they would have the

predominant say in how it was going to

be

organized so in July 1941 the US and

Britain had Frozen Japanese

assets they' issued an ultimat

the Japanese had to cease their strategy

of territorial aggression in the region

or face

ruin the Japanese are in dire economic

Straits because the Americans have

through sanctions choked off all their

supply of particularly Aviation spirit

and oil so the Japanese have two courses

in 1941 they can either surrender tamely

to the Americans and do what the

Americans want diplomatically or they

can fight well anyone with a grain of

sense to see the Japanese with their

culture of and samai were going to

[Applause]

fight the principal threat from the

Americans is the US Pacific Fleet which

is up at Pearl Harbor which must be

neutralized on the 7th of December 1941

Japan made a surprise attack on the

American naval base in

Hawaii without Pearl Harbor it's it's

it's very hard to imagine the United

States entering the war with the kind of

decisiveness that they that they

eventually did um it it had a huge

psychological impact the shock of Pearl

Harbor being attacked as it were of

America an unprovoked attack out of a

clear blue sky was stunning to to

Americans on the same day as Pearl

Harbor Japan's widespread main assault

in the Far East

commenced they attacked Thailand

Shanghai and the British colonies of

Malaya Hong Kong and Singapore

four the British already stretched

fighting Hitler were forced to

retreat on the 25th of December 1941

Hong Kong surrendered as British

officers handed Over Control to the

Japanese more than 130,000 British

troops were

captured Singapore fell 2 months later

of course the British were faced with an

almost impossible position

reinforcements weren't coming through

they hardly came through until the final

Japanese push in

1944 so there was a very difficult

dilemma for British officers and the

British army across that whole region

Britain's whole prestige in this area

rested on the idea that it was acting as

a protecting power to local societies so

when Britain failed to protect them um

the if you like all the legitimacy of

Brit rule evaporated

overnight by mid 1942 just six months

after Pearl Harbor Japanese expansion

seemed

Unstoppable they had taken a huge sthe

of territory to the South they occupied

most of the Pacific and were even

threatening to invade Australia

to the West Japan had been fighting a

major War in China ever since they had

invaded Manchuria a decade

previously so in a sense Japan was

actually invading part of China because

manua was not quite China That's the Way

British foreign office thought that

because of the different tribes and so

on um but from American point of view

there was definitely part of China of

course us was United States was not

happy with Japan Japan's expansion need

the American Fleet was wounded by the

attack at Pearl Harbor but not destroyed

because crucially their aircraft

carriers were at

Sea in June 1942 the Battle of Midway in

the Pacific began to turn the tide in

favor of the

Americans but thousands of American

Sailors had lost their

[Music]

lives throughout 1943 and 194 44 the

Americans steadily recaptured Pacific

Islands from the

Japanese the British joined the campaign

but in reality were always the junior

partner in the war in the Far East the

relationship between Britain and the

United States in the Pacific area was

rather different than in Europe the

Americans saw the Pacific War as their

War they hadd been attacked by Japan

they were going to get Japan now Britain

of course had their own interests in the

Far East they had a good part of the

Empire was there not just India but

Malaysia Burma particularly and

therefore they felt They too had an

interest in what was happening but the

Americans tended not to let them have

much input into strategy command in the

Far East was split between General

MacArthur for the Americans and Lord

mount baton for the British who was in

charge of the southeast Asia command or

seak the Americans and in particular

President Roosevelt were suspicious of

Britain's long-term

motives what they were very uneasy about

was the feeling that they were helping

the British to reoccupy their colonial

Empire in Southeast Asia and they even

had a little acronym a little

interpretation of the acronym southeast

Asia come on seak they thought it meant

uh save England's Asian colonies and

they were very unwilling to do that in

this asia-pacific war the Allies were

not United in their view you see I mean

the American ANS wanted to get rid of

all these European colonies in Southeast

Asia for rightly or wrongly there's no

doubt that uh Roosevelt was hostile

to the return of colonial regimes well

he was uh horse trading with Winston

Churchill who certainly did not want to

to give up India and certainly the the

other colonies as well we have the

Japanese to finish we have to stand

absolutely with our Great American Ally

but on the question of Empire Churchill

knew that the Great American Ally had

very different views from his own in

January 1945 the Americans had

triumphantly recaptured Manila the

capital of their own colony the

Philippines but they didn't regard this

as an imperial possession at all I think

they always believed that uh American

rule in the Philippines was of a

different nature to British and French

colonial rule they considered themselves

almost by definition as a Democratic

Republic to be non-imperial and

therefore if they were engaged in

imperialism it couldn't be imperialism

of the British and French kind and that

they were there genuinely for the

benefit of of the Philippines there was

a different kind of mindset in other

words in among the American public

towards uh American uh rule in the

Philippines there was no there was no

tradition in the United States of going

out and serving the

[Music]

Empire Britain's vast Empire in the East

had been largely taken by the Japanese

by mid 1942 except the biggest Colony

India which was to make a massive

contribution to the British war effort

India until the second world war was

relatively underdeveloped economically

but of course because it becomes a major

center of the British war effort they

have to begin to develop particularly

local service Industries on on a very

large scale for instance they begin to

develop plants for canning meat they

there's a huge increase in the

production of bottled beer for the

troops and the Indian army swelled

enormously in the second world war there

were something like 2 million men

underarms so it contributed massively to

to British military world power

throughout 1944 the British and Indian

armies fought Fierce battles in Burma

the commander of the forces was General

Sir William

slim the war against Japan is going well

our American Allies in the Pacific have

won great victories and we have had our

own successes in liberating the greater

part of Burma but the Japanese is a

tough enemy and much must be done before

he will admit

defeat Britain's primary objective in

Burma was to reopen a Supply route to

their Ally

China the Chinese Communists and

nationalists had put aside their

differences under leader Chang Kai Sheek

to defeat the occupying Japanese

finally towards the end of 1944 after

bitter fighting at the key Burmese

battles of impal and Kamina the Japanese

began to pull back the Forgotten Army

14th Army in Burma under General Sir

William slim is actually for the first

time beginning to get the Japanese on

the run it pushes down and pushes the

Japanese out of Burma but it's not doing

it just for that reason because the

prime aim of Mount baton and slim is to

open up the Burma Road so that chanai

she and the Chinese nationalists who are

also fighting the Japanese can be

supplied and the American Air Force puts

a colossal effort into airlifting

supplies in to supply the Chinese

nationalist Army and this if you like

double attack begins to roll the

Japanese back in

Burma by the start of 1945 the land

route from India through to China had

finally

opened and by March the British 19th

Indian division had taken Mandalay

the Japanese were on the

retreat local people were pleased to see

them go as one young school girl

recalls although life wasn't so bad

under the Japanese we were happy to see

them go our family could talk freely

without having to constantly look over

our shoulders I remember the whole

family getting rid of everything English

we had in the house just in case we got

into trouble for it my grandfather hit

local currency in Lamb Shades and I had

to destroy Ro my collection of

photographs of the English royal

family the Americans were also rolling

back the Japanese in the Pacific by the

21st of June

1945 they had taken the island of

okanawa but at Great

cost the Americans realized that to take

the Japanese Mainland could cost the

lives of up to a million American

soldiers they considered using their new

secret weapon the atom

[Music]

B by May 1945 the war in the Pacific was

entering its closing

stages on the 3rd of May Britain's 14th

Army entered rangon the capital of Burma

they found a city left in Ruins by the

fleeing

[Music]

Japanese many of the civilians had been

killed and only two fifths of the

population remained in the

city the 14th Army pushed on into

Central Burma fighting pockets of

Japanese resistance all the

way conditions in the Burmese jungle

were appalling for both the allies and

their

enemy retreating Japanese soldiers were

abandoned by their officers and forced

to March long distances many thousands

died from Hunger or disease some sought

help from locals as a Japanese soldier

wrote in his

diary I remember retreating through

India to Bulma during the monsoons which

took 6 months to go about 15 miles a

day everyone got so sick with Amic

decent

Tre we had no souls on our

shoes we just slept on the mountain side

the British army were coming very

slowly the buese people were really nice

to us

they were also Buddhist and felt

sympathetic toward us because we were so

sick in total we had lost about 75% of

our

men as the Japanese Army fought

desperately to avoid defeat they forced

the inhabitants of the occupied

countries into their war effort as slave

labor the Japanese particularly in early

1945 as the War moves into its final

stage do in fact uh impress huge

quantities of Labor from across the

whole region and of course one of the

untold stories is the very very large

number of uh burmes and Malay and even

Indo Chinese labor who actually die on

the death Railway I me one of the one of

the most tragic legacies of the war

which was never really spoken about at

the time was the the tens of thousands

of of women who were recruited by the

Japanese in in Korea but right across

southeast Asia to for sexual slavery um

to act as So-Cal Comfort women for

Japanese troops and and officers

terrible things to happen to civilian

populations in any war and of course on

the Allied side vast numbers of laborers

were also drawn into not exactly forc

labor but Pioneer work under terrible

conditions on that Burma front and again

there was there was mass mass death I

mean very large numbers of workers from

the smt Estates for instance were

impressed into service and very large

numbers of those died of

chera prisoners of War were also used as

slave labor and often treated cruy the

Japanese thought that it was

dishonorable to allow yourself to be

taken by the enemy but I think overall

the idea of becoming prisoner of war is

somewhat regarded as very

dishonorable and that's part of the

reason they uh treated prisoner of war

is very B how could you possibly believe

someone you remains prisoner of war

still hoping to survive is to them is

little bit incomprehensible so in a

sense they haven't got any respect for

prison of

War Japanese military culture demanded

that a soldier should die fighting

rather than be captured the commitment

required of kamikazi or suicide Pilots

was signified in a religious ceremony

mostly teenage boys these suicide

bombers had volunteered to make the

ultimate sacrifice for the glory of

their country and Emperor now the

Japanese kamikazi weapons came as a

terrific shock uh to everybody when they

came in and in fact claw the American

Navy back into serious casualties one of

the things that the divine wind the

kamikazi idea brings up is a thing

called the Baku bomb which is basically

rather like a V1 flying bomb with a one

ton water head on the front is dropped

from the belly of a bomber and then

Glides down in order to hit an aircraft

carrier or a US Naval Target the

difference is unlike the V1 it's got a

pilot a very determined young man

sitting there on his final mission in

fact the Baku is not a particularly

successful weapon uh the kamik cazis on

the other hand on balance although they

may be a One-Shot weapon turn out to be

enormously successful for a variety of

reasons one they do hit their targets

secondly because there's no return FL

they've got double the range a point

that a lot of people often forget and

last but not least because the Americans

are so far from their Fleet bases any

ship that's hit has to come out of the

battle line and go a long way away to be

repaired even a damag ships of

victory in all there were more than

5,000 kamikazi attacks against the

Americans during the last year of the

war they inflicted serious damage and

many ships were

[Music]

sunk but America controlled the air over

Japan and their bombers could drop their

deadly load anywhere on the mainland

with no

resistance I think Japan was a country

who was thoroughly defeated there was no

clear defense measure against uh

America's uh Convention of bombing

strategic bombing so it's clearly by

that time Japan should have thought

about surrendering or to AOW a

defeat but I think it's also you must

remember the sort of the ideas of uh

surviving in war other than victory was

somewhat it's very difficult for Japan

to

conceive the terms on which the Allies

would accept Japanese surrender were

discussed by Churchill and President

Truman when they met at Potsdam in July

1945 the Allies after Potsdam issue uh

an ultimatum saying that uh we must have

unconditional surrender and the Japanese

pay no attention to this poab

declaration uh on the grounds that they

want a guarantee that the emperor's

person will not be affected

unconditional surrender itself as a

concept I don't think Japanese ministers

could never understand its full

implications they expected Emperor

should be you know sort of being kept

intact the Japanese thought that

unconditional surrender would mean the

end of Emperor Hirohito and the imperial

system they could not even begin to

imagine this because although the

emperor had no political power he was

revered as the very embodiment of the

nation the end of the emperor meant the

end of Japan

the sticking point for Japan was the was

the fate of of Emperor

hito um but the but the from Truman's

point of view unconditional surrender

was completely non-negotiable whenever

he used the words unconditional

surrender chopping the air with his

hands in that very distinctive Truman

gesture when he used the words

unconditional surrender there' be a

storm of Applause so for as long as the

Japanese held out and tried to

prevaricate about the terms of surrender

um the administration was determined to

use all force it possibly had

available the possibility of developing

a nuclear weapon had been discussed

before the war

started Einstein had even written to

President Roosevelt warning him about

the potential danger of atomic power in

the wrong hands but in 1941 when America

found itself at War any reservations

were pushed aside a team of the

country's best scientists were were

recruited to make the bomb it was a

secret and costly operation spread out

over 40 SES it was called the Manhattan

Project the biggest difficulty was

creating pure enriched

uranium then in 1942 at the Oakridge

plant they perfected a process that gave

them a tiny amount of this vital

ingredient throughout the war Hitler had

also been trying to develop the atom

bomb but Germany never managed to get

enough pure uranium

to make what Hitler dreamt would be his

greatest weapon Japan had the same plan

and the same dream there are certainly

evidence uh that um Tojo uh prime

minister he once said we we would like

to you know have a successful Atomic uh

research because if the you know bomb

becomes available like to obviously use

it and Japan was yes Japan would have

used Atomic weapons uh if they had

successful uh bombs by that

time but the Americans were way ahead on

July the 16th 1945 the scientists on the

Manhattan Project were ready to test one

of the three devices that they had built

they called it little Gadget they didn't

know what would happen and some

scientists were worried that the nuclear

reaction might set off an Unstoppable

Chain Reaction which would destroy the

[Music]

world as it turned turned out the test

was

successful the logic of using the atomic

bomb against Japan was inherent in the

decision to put massive resources behind

the Manhattan Project the real decision

the agonizing that went on uh within the

the war department and within the White

House was not really over whether to use

the bomb in principle but how to use it

and when to use it

on the 16th of July in total secrecy the

Americans tested the atom bomb in New

Mexico on the 25th of July they warned

Japan of Devastation from the final

blows and called for unconditional

surrender the countdown to drop the bomb

had begun

people didn't know about it even fewer

people I think had a concept of the

sheer um nature and the sheer uh

magnitude of what it was I suspect that

a lot of people thought it was just a

really big regular bomb the fears about

Fallout um and the nature of what it

would do to people I think suspected by

scientists but not widely heal and

probably even those who knew who were in

policy-making positions thought

it doesn't matter what matters is to

bring the war to an end defeating Japan

because the alternative was having their

soldiers inch by inch on the beach inch

by inch through Japan fighting a people

that were determined not to give up a

rock so therefore hundreds of thousands

of Americans it was

perceived would die if they didn't use

the bomb would you rather kill hundreds

of thousands of your own soldiers or

hundreds of thousands of the enemy was

really what it came down to

some scientists thought the bombb should

be exploded to demonstrate its power not

dropped on the Japanese

people but the Americans only had two

bombs that were ready to use and they

were also worried that such a warning

would unleash Vengeance on prisoners of

war in

Japan because they thought Japan might

do that uh sort of treating prisoner

worse with the uh sort of demonstration

demonstration might give a sort of uh

Japanese to do some Revenge so I they

thought prisoner of war was a kind of

vulnerable

position the argument used for dropping

the bomb on a Japanese city was that its

Mighty power would shock them into

surrender the scientists knew that the

bomb's blinding light and towering

mushroom cloud was unlike anything

anyone had seen

before well they hoped it might shock

Japan into accepting unconditional

surrender because it the show show this

massive uh Power of Scientific

Technology and this is a new bomb which

does yield so massive destructive power

so it is a sort of like to give the

japanes kind of this shock

treatment in fact many Japanese

politicians were privately arguing for

surrender but the sticking point was the

American demand that it be

unconditional the Japanese military

thought this would mean the end of their

Nation they argued that it was the duty

of all Japanese people to die fighting

there was deadlock then on the 28th of

July Tokyo radio broadcast a call to the

people to fight on Truman called in his

advisers to decide what to do he was so

fixated as were everyone in the American

Administration on the pressing need to

end the war with Japan as fast as

possible but it's not really clear that

he he dwelt at Great length on the moral

or the world historic

significance of what he was about to do

did Truman realize what it was did he

agonize did it matter to

him from what one can tell from the

evidence he didn't

agonize he saw it as necessary his

advisers told him what it was they told

him it would probably bring the war to

an end almost immediately and they told

him it would save the lives of a

hundreds of thousands of American

soldiers and he didn't really

hesitate on the 31st of July Truman gave

the order to drop the bomb on Japan as

soon as the weather

permitted at 2 a.m. on the 6th of August

a b29 flying fortress bomber the anola

gay took off from a Pacific island

carrying a device nicknamed little

boy at 6:00 a.m. Colonel Paul Tibbits

gave the order to his crew to arm the

bomb the world's first atomic device

it was a fine and sunny day in

Hiroshima two planes were seen flying

high over the city people thought they

were just on a reconnaissance mission so

there was no air raid

warning the bommer dropped its deadly

load at 816

[Music]

[Music]

brighter than a thousand suns is how the

explosion was described by the

Japanese some 66,000 people were killed

outright many of them vaporized by the

intense heat and

blast all they left behind were their

Shadows people suffocated as all

available oxygen fed the massive

Fireball the buildings were completely

destroyed by a huge wind radiating out

over 6

miles by the end of 1945 a further

80,000 people had died of a mysterious

new illness of the blood radiation

sickness over the next 5 years a further

60,000 died of related

illnesses there were some who called on

Truman in public um pleas to him not to

use the bomb a second time and there

were many even within the administ ation

of course who hoped that that one um

bomb drop would be sufficient to prompt

a Japanese unconditional

surrender on the 7th of August the day

after the bomb was dropped President

Truman announced to the world what had

happened that afternoon an emergency

meeting of the Japanese cabinet was

called while Hiroshima lay in Ruins

military leaders argued that they should

not admit the bomb had been dropped

until a proper investigation had taken

place so a team of investigators would

dispat P to the

city on the 8th 2 days after the bomb

was dropped the investigation team

finally arrived in Hiroshima they were a

day late because of a faulty plane this

delay would have deadly

consequences in the early hours of the

9th of August the Red Army launched a

devastating attack on Japanese forces in

Manchuria an urgent meeting of the war

council was called for 10:30 a.m. during

this meeting they received news that a

second atomic bomb had been dropped this

time on

Nagasaki but the second use of the bomb

of course was to give a warning to the

Soviet Union the Soviet Union it was

feared and indeed moves are beginning to

M be made was moving into the Far East

the Soviet Union didn't declare war on

Japan till virtually the end of the war

and the United States wanted to make it

clear to the Soviet Union that they had

this weapon

and

implicitly might be driven to use it the

Soviets had spent three months moving

vast numbers of men across Siberia and

into China their target was to attack

Japanese forces in the province of

mansuria there were still 1 million

fanatical Japanese troops in Manchuria

the quantong Army and the Soviet High

command which by now was very

experienced in conducting large scale

operations s got three fronts or Army

groups and set them up in a special Far

Eastern command and on the night of the

e8th of August they attacked

simultaneously in a campaign that is

really awesome in its scale and scope

Mongolian troops um moving with tanks uh

and crossing the Great Wall of China so

you've got something that would have

been recognizable to Genghis

Khan in the nuclear Age The Red Army

ruthless and efficient military

operations surprised the Japanese this

made it more difficult for Japan to

carry on fighting Stalin had always been

threatened by Japan all through the

1930s he wanted to secure as much

Japanese territory as possible

under uh Soviet control as he possibly

could so he

rushed contingents of the Red Army along

the transiberian railway and and he did

grab Northern Territories of Japan put

them under Soviet military occupation

and they're still part of uh Russia

today they have never been given back to

the

Japanese by now all the leading

politicians in Japan wanted to surrender

but in some quarters the generals still

wanted to fight

on they did not know fully how many

bombs uh United States had at that time

and they somehow I heard that they

simply accepted as sort of the uh some

sort of rumor that United States may

have about 100 OD atomic bombs the next

to Target maybe Tokyo that's obviously

frightened uh some of the uh Japanese

leadership but still they could not

agree on what to do Japanese sort of

decision making process was very much

based on consensus eventually because

the consensus never seems to be

established

and so therefore the emperor was asked

to make a decision which is very unusual

but he said you know we really have to

accept the unconditional surrender

finally on the 14th of August 1945

Emperor Hirohito on behalf of the

Japanese people surrendered the

following day the emperor broadcast his

message to the

nation I remember the emperor's

broadcast over the radio we gathered

together I knew something terrible had

happened the emperor spoke very matter

of fact not encouraging at all saying we

would see a new

future there were rumors too going

around that everyone had to commit

suicide and that the emperor and

ministers responsible would have to go

to prison or be killed I was very

[Music]

[Applause]

frightened World War II was finally over

but now a new battle was about to begin

a political struggle for control of the

post-war world and because of the atom

bomb the stakes would be even higher

than during the

war on the 14th of August the Japanese

government accepted the terms for peace

set out at the potan conference

President Truman called a midnight press

conference

I deem this reply a full acceptance of

the pts Dam

declaration which specifies the

unconditional surrender of

Japan in the reply there is no

[Music]

[Applause]

qualification the Japanese surrender

prompted spontaneous celebrations

throughout the United States of America

[Music]

the following day these scenes were

repeated in Britain VJ

Day but behind the scenes the fine

detail still had to be hammered out so

General MacArthur the American Supreme

Commander met Japanese officials in the

Philippines on the 30th of August the

the American official occupation of

Japan began as their troops landed for

the first time on the Japanese

Mainland the Western allies now faced

the huge task of

reconstruction Japan had been devastated

by the war an estimated 9 million people

were made homeless and throughout

southeast Asia people were

[Music]

starving across the Pacific Japanese

commanders signed surrender documents

the British hoped that they could now

reoccupy their old

colonies there was a strong feeling

within the British army that they wanted

to be able to reconquer these

territories by military or Naval

campaign in order to show who was Top

Dog unfortunately that didn't happen

because the MacArthur said after the

Japanese surrender no military activity

until I General MacArthur have signed

the

overall U surrender in Tokyo

bay this formal surrender to the

Americans finally took place on board

the USS Missouri on the 2nd of September

as American planes Flew Over The

City MacArthur had forced the British to

wait for 3 weeks before they could

reoccupy their former colonies this had

a dramatic impact on events in

Asia during the war Japan had encouraged

a feeling of Independence in its

occupied

territories at the end of the war

nationalist groups by now armed saw

their chance to fight for complete

Independence something the Japanese had

already

promised Burma for instance the Japanese

did give formal Independence to the

country there was a flag there was

somebody in charge who was Burmese

apparently uh there were local officials

who were Burmese so people did for the

first time see the possibilities of

Independence so as the British began to

re-enter their former territories they

faced armed Independence movements in

Malaya for example there was the local

communist Guerilla army with whom the

British had to negotiate this was very

different from the way things used to be

Britain and indeed France traditionally

worked through local Elites you didn't

have millions of Frenchmen and millions

of of uh of Britain actually out there

um running places you work through local

Elites such as in India and work that

way now the question is if you have

Rising nationalist movements Vietnam for

example India for a long time and so

forth do you suppress them or do you

work with them just extraordinary how

Asian nationalism was galvanized by the

war um across the whole region I mean

the British certainly went back into

Southeast or parts of Southeast Asia but

it was never the same again

[Music]

and I think some of the first wave of

the Britains who arrived were actually

appalled when they were met and by Young

nationalists underarms who' been been

been trained and mobilized by the

Japanese the attitude of the United

Kingdom tended to be you bought them off

or you suppressed them the United States

said this was shortsighted that you

worked with these movements until you

began to fear they might be communist

but you work with these movements cuz

this is the future

many of these movements were in fact

communist and these Guerilla armies had

been some of the most determined

Fighters against the occupying

Japanese the Soviet Union saw this as an

opportunity to expand its sphere of

influence um there were a large number

of people in Moscow who volunteered uh

as International volunteers for what

they thought was going to be the

forthcoming War for the liberation of

India Stalin he um was a keen from an

intern National communist point of view

to see British power overthrown in its

Asian

colonies on the 21st of September the

leaders of Indian Nationalism Gandhi and

neru issued a demand they wanted all of

Southeast Asia to be free of imperialist

domination the reality on the ground was

starvation for millions and widespread

lawlessness the Allies were determined

to use any means to restore order in

Indonesia a Dutch Colony the British

were given the job of restoring Dutch

colonial rule in the final hours of the

war the Indonesians had proclaimed

Independence under the charismatic

figure sakano and it fell to the British

from October of 1945 to reoccupy

Indonesia restore order and disarm what

was at this point a a nationalist Army

of the Republic of Indonesia Mount baton

who was the the British

commander-in-chief for the for this

region saxi was told that he must take

over the territory of Indonesia and he

moved in he had inadequate troops to do

anything in the way I mean Indonesia is

a vast vast place with you know 150

Islands so basically he had no choice

but to use the Japanese to main Security

in in the

region in a controversial move both the

Americans and the British used Japanese

troops to reimpose orderorder and

suppress the Nationalist armies in many

of the

colonies what happened was that the

Japanese Gave Over command of their

troops most of which were still armed to

the Allied Victors so across the region

the British and the Americans were very

often using armed Japanese troops to

restore order and this was another

reason for extreme hostility on the part

of Asian people and indeed many British

soldiers were extremely dubious about

the use of their former enemies so

quickly against people who might have

been their former

friends one of these dubious British

soldiers was a 24-year-old infantry man

seeing Japanese troops for the first

time our unit was first toore within

yards we bumped into our first Japanese

troops they were all still fully armed

from then on the strangest surrender in

military history took place the Japanese

Army still kept all their arms until the

formal

surrender we pushed on for a mile the

first four weeks in Malaya were

surrealistic when we took over the small

town of aor star we put the Union Jack

on the flag pole of the Town Hall but

the company Commander ordered us to take

it

down the flag came down because the

British officer needed the Loyalty of

the Japanese troops to enforce Law and

Order but the Japanese had no choice but

to cooperate with their conquerors whose

bombs had flattened two of their largest

cities a serving officer in Japan at the

time was Professor Ian Nish I I

naturally wanted to go to Hiroshima and

see for myself from from where my unit

was and uh I mean for various reasons

one didn't have uh cars or Jeeps or

anything one had to go by train and uh

so I went on my own and I just wandered

about the the deserted streets it was a

sort of it was a

[Music]

wasteland the second world war had ended

but at an enormous cost in human life

and its Legacy would be felt for decades

to come

Victory had ushered in the nuclear age a

period of great fear and suspicion where

the former allies now threatened Global

[Music]

destruction in this program we see how

as 1945 Drew to an end the world was to

change shape

forever millions of people were forced

to move home and Country as borders were

redrawn and new occupying government

installed the wartime trials at

nurenberg in November aimed to meet out

Justice to the Nazi

leadership by the end of the year

America and the Soviet Union were on the

brink of a new Cold War the forces which

were to shape International politics for

the next 50 years took root in

1945 by the Autumn of 194 45 the second

world war was over Germany and Japan had

been defeated but at an unimaginable

cost across the world 55 million people

had been

killed the use of the atom bomb against

the Japanese people had changed the very

nature of warfare

itself defeated countries were under the

military and political control of the

victors with no idea when this would

end Germany was divided into zones

controlled by America the Soviet Union

Britain and

France by August Japan was occupied by

the Americans

alone countries across the world had

been devastated by the war and although

the victors were concerned about Global

Security reconstructing their economies

at home was a major priority only

America had escaped the war

unscathed the mainland United States had

not been invaded had not been attacked

nothing had happened so it's it's

industrial position was

unimaginable in a sense it was way up

there and everyone else was down

[Music]

here between 1940 and 1944 American

industry had grown by

50% America was now the richest country

on earth and its citizens had the

highest standard of living by far the

country truly was the economic

Powerhouse of the

world the United States had had a good

War this was a war that had returned

prosperity to the American people that

had restored the American people's faith

in capitalism and abundance that in

their sense that the American dream was

still alive that the uh prospects for

the future never looked um brighter what

had happened during the war was that

people had been earning higher wages

than they'd ever had before employment

was full even people serving the Army

were earning wages of a scale that they

that they couldn't have imagine Before

the War and what they' done with all

that money was to save it and so there

was a tremendous consumer spending boom

in the end of 1945 and into 1946 and

Americans were going out and buying cars

and buying radios and buying new homes

there was also great geographical

mobility within the United States during

the War uh a migration on an

unprecedented scale of African-Americans

from the south into the great industrial

cities of the north where the jobs were

during the war and that of course was to

have a profound impact on American

society after the war black Americans in

the South still lived in a society

segregated by race and many returning

black soldiers found they had fought

Fascism and racism abroad only to face

it themselves when they got home

[Music]

there was no big Fanfare on coming home

though it was good to see my family

Prejudice was just the same as before

the war but instead of anger I focused

on finishing my

education I went to postgrad school and

got my masters but when it came time for

applying to the major corporations I was

in for a shock though I got interviews

it was my white counterparts that were

offered the jobs some of whom I had

assisted despite being better qualified

than most and my contribution to the

nation as a combatant soldier the

options for me as an African-American

were not wide

enough there's no doubt that the

experience of African-Americans during

the second world war seed the seeds for

the future Civil Rights Movement a

movement which was paralleled in the

British Empire as demands for

Independence in India and elsewhere grew

to a clamor but it was however an Empire

which Britain could ill afford as the

only country which had fought all

through the war Britain was Victorious

but

bankrupt for the British people life in

peace time was to be a bitter

continuation of wartime

deprivations in a perverse way the

British predicament at the end of the

second world war was the worst because

while the Germans had a profound sense

not of guilt but of defeat they knew

they' lost the British thought they'd

won everyone had imagined there would be

an exult a about Victory but in the end

when they actually stood among the

rubble of the Blitz and the rockets in

England and the poverty of a nation that

have bankrupted itself that somehow it

all seemed terribly disappointing and

somehow the two late comers the second

world war the Russians and the Americans

both of which had not joined in as a

matter of principle but only because

they were attacked had come out as top

dogs

[Music]

millions of British troops were demobbed

by the end of

1945 they came home with high

expectations which all too often were

severely

dashed for a soldier coming back to his

family it was obviously a joyful reunion

up to a point he was often a stranger to

his children his wife had had to find

ways of coping and being independent

during the war which had in a sense

excluded um a husband a man had been

living in an entirely male environment

where his life was very structured for

him he suddenly had to come back

readjust to his home life find a job you

know demobilization in a an a an austere

um you know decaying um devastated

country I think it was an extraordinary

difficult time for women too the

adjustment was difficult for many the

the freedom of their wartime years was

over the divorce rate Rose hugely as

after the second world war it had been

around 10,000 in 1938 and it Rose to

over 25,000 in 1945 70% of that was for

adultery and what was a change was of

course for the first time um more women

were suing for divorce than

men the main material demand was for

more housing as millions of homes had

been destroyed by bombing food and

clothing were also in short supply and

rationing of some basic Goods continued

right up until

1954 after the war there was a terrible

housing shortage I lived in two rooms in

an aunt's house we had a bedroom and a

room with a sink and a stove and we had

use of the bathroom my friend lived in

even smaller rooms she was terribly

excited that she could buy a new source

spin there was such a shortage of

everything another an was eventually

housed in a brand new prefab which

looked just like a cream and green

trimmed doll's house rationing went on

for a long time after the war you

couldn't buy furniture you had to buy

utility Furniture which was very cheap

wood put together to make chests of

drawers and tables and you even had to

have coupons for

that in July the hope of a better fairer

world had swept a labor government to

power under the leadership of Clement

Atley the harsh reality of Britain at

the end of the war was that although

there were enormous expectations of the

Atley government there were expectations

of a better Society expectations of an

end to Poverty but Atley was dealing

with a A near bankrupt Nation uh

dreadfully in Hawk to the

Americans the economic problems of

creating a new Society were absolutely

enormous undaunted on the 12th of

October the new Chancellor of the exer

Hugh Dalton made his first budget

speech this outlined Labor's vision for

the future and paved the way for the

nationalization of industry and the

creation of a welfare state and National

Health

Service this is the program on which we

were elected this is the program we

intend to carry out and my job as labor

Chancellor of the ex cheer is to find

the money to do all these things

properly an awful lot of people would

have said were saying to the atle

government well yes I it very nice to

have a f as society and Social Security

and decent education and health but but

not now because we're bankrupt and Atley

of course knew that now was the

political opportunity now was the only

time if it wasn't going to be now it was

going to be

never the Soviet people had paid a very

high price for winning the war one in

every 10 had died and thousands of towns

and cities were

leveled whole rural districts were

destroyed and farming had practically

ceased in the Soviet Union which had

taken a

disproportionate share of casualties

some 27 million killed overall large

numbers of men were dead so a huge

burden focused on women if you look at

the uh statistics the population

after the second world war the the

imbalance between men and women is quite

extraordinary the Soviet Union in fact

had no resources to throw into

reconstruction because everything in

Western USSR had been completely

destroyed and the effort they put into

winning the war had been

inordinate looting and black

marketeering were rif and social order

had virtually

collapsed Stalin quickly opted to

restore the old system of controls in

the USSR he was going to reconstruct the

country not by making concessions to

popular opinion he knew that if he he

did this it would be seen as a permanent

weakening of the old system and he saw

his own power and the party's power as

essential for the maintenance of the

USSR as a global

power the struggle for Global power

between Stalin and the other world

leaders was to have a profound impact on

the millions of people whose lives had

already been changed Forever by the war

the victors wanted peace but on their

own

terms the price that the people of

Europe were to pay was ethnic cleansing

on a vast scale

the Autumn of 1945 saw the dawn of a new

post-war era America had the most

powerful economy in the

world the Soviet Union was a global

power but like Britain it had been

financially crippled by the war the

process of reconstruction was to be long

and

painful after 6 years of war the

Victorious allies were k to create the

foundations of a stable and peaceful

world their big fear was that a war

would be provoked by a series of ethnic

conflicts particularly in those European

countries where German people were

living there were many millions of

ethnic Germans German speaking people

who lived right across Eastern Europe

and who've done so in many cases for for

decades if not centuries and the

existence of this kind of patwork quilt

of German minorities right across

Eastern Europe up along the Baltic into

Russia down the vulga and so on was

something which the Western allies and

the Soviet Union would considered been

major impulse towards the second world

war and a major cause of atrocities

during the war it's important to

remember that that the Nazi plan for

Eastern and East Central Europe had been

one of total ethnic reordering in which

the Jews who lived there were to be

exterminated up to 30 million Slavic

inhabitants were to be allowed in the

longer term to die of starvation or to

be worked to death and ethnic Germans

who lived there or who lived in Germany

itself were to be moved in moved around

and put in charge of large Farmers which

would be worked by slaves from the local

population and without that kind of

background it's very difficult to

understand the hatred and bitterness

which the um local Czechs slovaks and

poles and others felt towards ethnic

Germans the policy of ethnic transfer

what we now call ethnic cleansing was

well established before the war ended as

Stalin's Red Army moved West ethnic

minorities were removed to eliminate

conflict or

dissent in Late July 1945 at the potam

conference this policy got the official

stamp of approval Churchill Stalin and

Truman backed the mass deportation of

ethnic Germans from their homes across

Europe including those living in Poland

Czechoslovakia and

Hungary Potsdam delineated a new map it

redrew the

boundaries for many of the countries of

Eastern Europe the big change occurred

with the moving of Poland westwards the

country was moved across so that it

gobbled up a piece of Germany but it

released a piece of its own territory to

the

USSR so various territorial redrawings

took

place and while these were being done

ethnic cleansing also took

place before the war a third of Poland

was made up of ukrainians Jews and other

different

nationalities by 1948 95 % of its

inhabitants were polish

Catholics while the Soviet Union looked

after the transfer of populations in the

Ukraine in Poland Britain and America

organized the transfer of ethnic

minorities in the

west one saw after the war something on

the order of 12 mli million people

traveling from one part of Europe often

their homes for generations to another

part because they happen to share

ethnicity perhaps not history perhaps

not tradition perhaps not for

Generations had they been there

nevertheless they were forced to

go my family lived in Carlsbad in the

sodon land one day all German women and

children were told to Peck a few things

my mother siblings and I were taken to a

camp then we were fed in dark cattle

trucks to West Germany there we were

sent to another Camp until we ended up

in a tiny village in the area of tur

ringing from here I walked every day for

an hour through the snow to work in a

toy Workshop I had to earn money for us

to eat my employer felt sorry for me he

told me to look for work in a local

family instead so I found a job helping

a woman in the house she said let's give

it a try for a month on the 28th day I

was so frightened that I would have to

leave the next day I began to weep but

they told me I could stay and I lived

there for the next 2

years it was a dreadful period for the

Germans in particular who were fleeing

with just what they could take into

their hands into the new Germany where

they weren't

welcomed for the poles who were dumped

in Silesia they could move into German

houses but there was a lot of wreckage

in the new Poland and the task of

economic Recon construction was only

just beginning so for very very large

numbers of people the war had been bad

enough but the immediate postwar period

was almost as

bad millions of people were forcibly

removed from their homes 12 million of

whom were

Germans and the borders of Europe were

literally redrawn beneath their feet it

became a continent primarily of

ethnically separate

countries the exception was Yugoslavia

its wartime nationalist resistance had

grown into a massive political force by

the end of the war it had captured

enough states to create the new country

of Yugoslavia under the leadership and

control of General Tito yosu Bros Tito

the strong man of the partisan movement

during the second world war the

resistance movement that fought the

German occupiers actually had to

construct a Yugoslavia which brought

together a variety of different

nationalities to create a bigger

territorial entity in the state of

Yugoslavia but it was based on

multi-ethnicity it was based on the idea

that you can pull together a variety of

different ethnic groups and slowly these

people will believe in a Yugoslav nation

and start calling themselves yugoslavs

which made it completely different from

the other states in the

region both Stalin and the West were

irritated by Yugoslavia fearing that it

threatened stability in Europe the West

feared a communist state in the region

Stalin hated a communist state which she

he did not

control until his death in 1980 Tito

managed to withstand both external and

internal pressure on the boundaries of

Yugoslavia but in the 1990s his dream of

a multiethnic society collapsed into

bloody Civil

War stability in Europe was not the only

ambition of the Allies they wanted

global stability as well defined spheres

of influence and the resolution of

disputes through dialogue and

negotiation not through a third world

[Music]

War even before victory was secured

Churchill and Roosevelt had started to

talk about the rules and institutions

which would be needed to maintain peace

and security when the war was

over the project for reshaping the

international order began in August

1941 when Churchill and Rosevelt met in

New Foundland and concocted a document

called the Atlantic Charter it's a very

short document and it basically proposed

a new world order a world order based on

rules and premised on three basic

foundations firstly that states would be

subject to limits on the use of force

War would be outlawed secondly States

would respect the Dignity of the human

individual and that was how

international human rights law was born

and thirdly States would subject

themselves to a system of economic

liberalization free trade and all the

related Market type mechanisms which we

now rather familiar with and it more or

less put in place the system which we

still have today the second world war

was a obviously a turning point in

America's not only views of the world

but of her place in the world the US did

not want to be involved in yet another

world war and to prevent that they had

to try to in a sense not only be part of

the world but to try to Recon construct

the world in a way that this would

obviate the need for War and the main

forum for this was going to be the

United

Nations the structure of the United

Nations was hammered out by the allies

during the War years every nation was to

be represented and its mission was to

maintain peace with the use of force if

necessary but the use of force was to be

decided not on a majority vote but by

the much smaller Security

Council the had been a lot of

negotiation um the question was there

going to be a veto in the security

Council who was going to be members um

how did you join the United Nations what

were going to be the powers of the

general assembly as opposed to the

security Council and eventually what

happens is that negotiations give and

take came up with an organization each

of the great Powers could live with the

United Nations Charter was ratified on

the 24th of October 1945 by 51 countries

but the ultimate power arrested with a

permanent members of the security

Council the Soviet Union America Britain

France and China even today these five

remain the only members of the United

Nations top table you members of this

conference are to be the architects of a

better World in Your Hands rests our

future the Allies now moved on to

holding the Nazis to account with the

creation of the world's first

International War crime

[Music]

tribunal by November 1945 a World

peacekeeping Council the United Nations

had been created Europe was being

reshaped into single ethnic

States but the future of Germany in the

New World Order had still to be agreed

none of the Allies wanted a resurgence

aggressive Germany in the heart of

Europe Germans were still living in a

very um miserably poor situation where

there was still a bomb damage to be

cleared up although the effort to clear

up bomb damage under the supervision of

the Allies started almost straight away

was carried out particularly by women

so-called Rubble women who cleared away

the rubble they were living in

conditions where currency was losing its

value and where the black market which

had had already begun under the Nazis

and the later years of the war reached

epidemic

proportions Germany was a major problem

for governments because there was

virtually nothing left and what they

didn't want to do was to recreate what

they had seen before the job was to

rebuild

Germany but to panish the

Nazis to den naify Germany the Allies

had to identify those who had been

active in the Nazi regime and those who

were in effect fellow

Travelers thousands and thousands of

Germans were forced to uh fill out very

lengthy and elaborate forms detailing

what they'd done and what they belonged

to in the Third Reich and were subjected

to interviews it's an

unprecedented operation on an enormous

scale trying to establish the exact

degree of licity of an entire population

in the crimes of of its former regime

and according to the where you were

actually placed on this list of Hardline

Nazi all the way down through fellow

traveler to not not being involved you

were then given or denied opportunities

to have a job earn a living enter the

professions take up your previous

profession and of course this very

quickly became the object of a great

deal of political um maneuvering as

people who had been very him heavily

implicated in the regime tried to get

testimonies to convince the

denotification tribunals that they had

in fact only been fellow Travelers or

fellow Travelers that they had really

not been involved at

all there's a lot of evidence that

Nazism had penetrated more deeply into

the mentality of younger Germans than it

had amongst older ones the Allies

mounted a massive re-education program

with new school textbooks with an

attempt to find teachers and school who

would be committed to democratic

values with radio programs

[Music]

films after the war Russian soldiers

moved into our town at the cinema we

were shown films of the release of

prisoners from concentration camps my

parents I and everyone I know were

absolutely

horrified anyone closely connected with

the Nazi party was removed from their

jobs I don't know if my father was a

member of the Nazi party but a lot of

people were they had to

be the husband of my mother's best

friend was a teacher he lost his job and

was cutting wood to make money people

did what they could to

survive lots of people left and I

thought we had to go as

well but father said no we should stay

he was a children's doctor and was

needed to work in the

hospital he also had to look after the

Russian soldiers and their wives so he

and we were pretty much left

alone the leading participants in the

Nazi regime faced a different

fate initially Churchill and Stalin too

had thought simply of shooting Hitler

and the leading Nazis and so far as they

survived the war out of hand but they

were persuaded um EV

that it would make a lot more sense and

perhaps have a more educative effect uh

and of course uh emphasize the rule of

law which had suffered so badly in Nazi

Germany if they put them on trial before

an international Military Tribunal so

what was envisaged was to create an

international tribunal which would

exercise jurisdiction over individuals

for illegal War for war crimes

for crimes against humanity

there was also a broader project of

dentifying Germany showing the entire

population that one had happened was not

acceptable showing that when individuals

breached established standards of human

behavior they would be

punished nurburg was chosen as the sight

of the trials because it had been the

place where the Nazis had held their

annual party rally right through the

Third Reich and so it had come to have a

symbolic importance as the national

center of national socialism before 1945

there were no rules of international law

which generally prohibited violations of

fundamental human rights or which

stopped one state from using military

force against another state or which

dealt with global trade or foreign

investment or Finance um the general

position was that under international

law a state was free to do whatever

international law didn't expressly

prohibit it from doing so if there were

no clear rules on something the state

was free to act there were no rules on

genocide there were no rules on

extermination of large parts of your

population and states were free in

international law to do

that they had to Draft rules from new

and that has always dogged the Newberg

system because it meant that the rules

which were applied to events occurring

after

1939 didn't exist when the events

actually occurred and that's why

nurenberg has always been referred to as

Victor's Justice they drafted the rules

they adopted the rules after the

terrible events had

happened despite all the difficulties

and uncertainty about how to bring the

Nazis to account the trials began on

November the 20th

1945 however unsatisfactory and

imperfect the nurburg trials were they

were a real attempt to impose a code of

justice Upon A regime that have brought

unspeakable misery upon the

world 24 leading Nazis were tried at the

first nurenberg tribunal 11 were

sentenced to death and the rest

imprisoned by God the trials are very

widely publicized they were filmed they

were shown in news reels they were seen

very much as a as a way of educating the

German people in the criminal nature of

the regime that they had been living

under since

1933 but this only had a limited effect

I think you can't change a people

overnight and although these efforts

were very widespread and and and very

seriously undertaken there was a growing

belief amongst Germans that They too had

been victims of the war and many Germans

saw the war crimes trials as something

rather vindictive many other smaller

Trials of Nazi Collaborators were also

held

there was a trial of doctors who'd been

involved in medical experimentation in

the camps uh there was a trial of

lawyers who'd been involved in the

perversion of Justice the meeting out of

death sentences for trivial offenses and

many other things as a trial of big

industrialists as a trial of um leading

SS officers implicated in the mass

shootings and extermination of Jews over

1,700 individuals were tried between

1946 and

1949 with hundred of Nazis imprisoned or

executed for war crimes but many other

Nazis escaped Justice we may say 60

years on how terrible it was that a lot

of evil men um escaped to Spain or to

South America and so on that a lot of

Western soldiers they'd had enough they

didn't want retribution they just wanted

peace yes virtually all the top nais

were caught yes as many of The

Architects the concentration camps who

could be found were brought to Justice

and yes some rej Justice was extracted

by the Russians in particular but

otherwise um a lot of very bad men um

Slipped Away into the um cracks of

Europe and were never seen again in the

West in Japan Justice was also pursued

by the Allies trials began in Tokyo in

May 1946 under American

supervision here hundreds of Japanese

officers were tried for war crimes and

crimes against Allied prisoners of War

but many more were to escape justice as

the Cold War began to overshadow

American International Politics the

roots of this cold war which would last

nearly half a century could already be

seen in the last months of

[Music]

1945 by December 1945 the shape of the

rest of the 20th century was already

sketched out Britain was no longer a

world player America was an economic

Powerhouse ready to convert the world to

capitalism and the Soviet Union while

economically weak was ideologically

strong and determined to defend

communism from being a Pari State sort

of Rogue state in the 1920s and 30s to

the verge of Extinction in 1942 it had

sprung back to a position where it was

the only Power that could affect ly

oppose and balance the United States on

the world stage Stalin at the end of the

war knew that the Americans intended to

be the dominant world power they were

setting up military bases linking up the

whole of the world they were

penetrating the political orders in the

most powerful countries all around the

world they were using their economic

might uh as a means of

increasing uh their political and

military power by the end of

1945 the Soviet Union was well on the

way to being one of the two superpowers

it did not have working nuclear weapons

but it was working on them and would

have them within four years in August

1949 the Soviet Union ran their first

successful Atomic

test but the real really important

weapon for the Americans in their battle

with the Soviet Union was their

economy from the depression of the 30s

America had become the richest country

in the world at the end of 1945 half of

the the manufacturing capacity of the

world was in the United States the

Americans had an almost complete

Monopoly over the developing new

technologies of of electronics and

Aerospace there was the United States

was far from being bankrupt was a

massive creditor uh Nation it was at the

at the summit of its power certainly the

Soviet Union expected the United States

to go into a profound depression after

the end of the war because it would have

no one to sell its Surplus production to

and therefore it was to the benefit of

the United States that it try to

reconstruct not only countries but

International Financial and economic

systems to rebuild the world so that its

Farmers its producers its industrialists

have someone to sell their goods

to the Americans wanted new markets and

they also believed that International

Trade would make war less

likely somehow things had to be

organized that would not only make war

more impossible but more unlikely

because people weren't going to be so

concerned with taking people's

territories or people's trade and so

forth during the war the American and

British governments had been planning

for a post-war World they thought free

trade and international economic

cooperation would prevent booms and

slumps and help countries in financial

difficulties the idea is when you bind

economies and make them economically

interdependent it's much more difficult

for Conflict for War uh to break out

that's the logic of free trade the

Essential Elements of globalization in

its modern sense namely that one state

one Community has an interest in what

another Community does or doesn't do was

established by the vision of Churchill

and Roosevelt

however by the end of the war Britain

and America were no longer equal

partners and much of this Cooperative

sentiment disappeared one of the first

victims was Britain

itself with her gold reserves wiped out

Britain had survived the war by relying

on American Aid and Military and

Industrial Equipment which was to be

paid for later this scheme was known as

Lend

Lease fairly soon after the Atley

government came in the um the United

States suddenly withdrew lend Le this

was a Lifeline to Britain and it meant

imminent bankruptcy so the only thing

that was left for Britain to do was to

seek a vast American Loan and there

were long and detailed and bitter

negotiations it was pretty clear to the

Americans that Britain was in dire

economic shape the Americans saw that

British need for finance as a way of

getting the British to accept various

policies the United States wanted them

to accept various policies economic

policies open up the Empire to American

trade for example the British saw this

is opening up the empire for American

business to take it over

commercially the Americans saw it as

freedom for their businessmen that's one

good example of the types of changes the

United States wanted to enforce in

Britain as a price of the financial aid

that Britain so desperately needed the

vote by the American Congress of the

loan to Britain is good

news the agreement that was finally

reached was for a loan a rather smaller

loan than Britain had hoped to get but a

loan nonetheless enough to save off

immediate

bankruptcy Britain borrowed 3.75 billion

but on very harsh terms and it had to be

repaid with interest over the next 50

years the terms in effect meant that

there was bound to be a financial crisis

in Britain within two or three years and

financial crisis in fact you know due

arrived in

1947 and it forced the Americans to see

what they hadn't really admitted before

just how weak Britain was now of course

the long-term result means both

political and economic dependence on the

United States and has ever since there

isn't a single prime minister since atle

I suspect who didn't see America and the

American relationship as the only one

that really fundamentally mattered but

the reason that that is the case is is

partly political uh dependence but it is

hardly because we still owe vast sums of

money dating back initially to that

enormous loan negotiated between Atley

and

Truman today Britain still owes America

over2 200

million are any other country but in

1945 Clement Atley the British prime

minister was not deterred by the

attitude of the Americans he refused to

be deflected from his plans for social

reform all sorts of things that we now

take for granted the IDE idea that if

you're ill you can go to the doctor you

don't have to count count your bank

balance and say I can't afford the

doctor the idea that everybody has a

right to secondary education that dates

from the a government the idea that if

you're out of work you don't starve

there is a a basic subsistence

supplement all of that was creation by

the a government none of it existed

before an awful lot of it does not exist

still in vast chunks of the world includ

including the United States of

America but at the time many thought

America would follow Britain what was

happening in Britain seemed to some

Americans to be um almost self-evidently

the way of the future and they assumed

that sooner or later progressives in

America assumed that sooner or later the

United States would follow the British

example down the path towards a national

system of Health Insurance federal

support for housing and education the

reason why eventually it didn't get

anywhere was because the conservative

Alliance of rep Republicans and

conservative Democrats were Now

bolstered by being able to contrast an

American tradition of uh self-help and

individualism and limited government

against what was increasingly perceived

as the looming Soviet

threat as American attitudes hardened

their government seized effective

control of the international monetary

fund and World Bank both established

during the dying days of 1945

the cooperation and support of the War

years and the hopes of this continuing

in peace was soon forgotten and Europe

was to face years of extreme

hardship not until after 1945 did

America offer substantial support for

reconstruction with the introduction of

the Marshall Plan the United States to

the Marshall Plan forced these countries

incourage these countries facilitated

these countries to get rid of these

tariff barriers and make it one huge

Market this would enable Europe to

reconstruct to become a a viable

continent again against the Soviet Union

amongst other things and also a huge

market for all the Surplus American

grain and uh tined meat products and

cars and steel a place a market for

these Goods to be sold so it was a it

was a win-win situation for the United

States and indeed for Europe as well

West Germany with the help of Martial

Aid also began to recover and by the

late 1950s began to Boom what really

made the difference in the end to the

way the Germans thought about democracy

was the experience of the soal economic

miracle in the 1950s the economy thanks

to martial aid from the Americans and

thanks to many other factors had really

taken off and it finally became clear to

Germans that democracy in West Germany

at least could deliver prosperity in a

way that the vimer Republic in the years

before Nazism had signally failed to

do in Japan also America saw the

importance of its occupation to ensure

both the Reconstruction of the country

from the devastation of War and the

creation of an ally against what they

saw as a growing communist threat from

China America ended its occupation of

Japan in

1952 by which time Japan had a healthy

economy and political

[Music]

democracy by the end of 1945 the world

was dividing into two ideological

blocks the Soviet Union was imposing

communism on the countries it had

liberated from Germany at the end of the

war while America was extending its

political influence in the

west these opposing views would dominate

global politics for nearly 50 years the

end of 1945 we have a world transformed

you have a United States of unimaginable

power strength wealth and influence you

have a United Kingdom that is aware of

its weakness but also aware even more of

how much it has to cleave together with

the United States which is one major

reason why they ense as far as they can

go along with what the United States

wants but you've also got a Soviet Union

that in a sense has reverted to its

pre-war position of being seen as um an

enemy so you have a situation where

three allies for various reasons have to

work together but maintain a wey

distrust and this made for a post-war

world of tension and some

danger and certainly a lot of unexpected

outcomes as 1945 came to an end Millions

hoped that they and their children and

grandchildren would never see the like

of the last six years ever

again there have been Wars Terror and

genocide since but many ions have also

experienced relative peace and

prosperity